THE SAVE WORTH £100M
Huddersfield get ready to write a new chapter of their fairy tale after Jonas Lossl made...
JONAS LOSSL sits on a small sofa at Huddersfield Town’s training ground on Leeds Road and lets his mind drift back t hree months to the moment when he became t he f ace of underdog triumph and proof that survival in the Premier League is not just about the might of money. He thinks about that save again and smiles. ‘I watched it back a few times,’ he says. ‘I definitely did.’
It was the save that ensured Huddersfield’s debut season in the Premier League ended in a fairy tale rather than heroic failure. It was the save that made them safe and gave the top flight the feel-good story of the season. It was the save that meant Lossl and his team-mates get to battle the odds for another nine months, starting with a home game against Chelsea on Saturday.
It is the best possible opener for Lossl because i t was against Chelsea, at Stamford Bridge on Ma y 9, that h e ma d e the breathtaking second- half stop which provided t he Denmark goalkeeper, who played every minute of every league game for his club l ast season, with the defining moment of his career so far and earned him a place in the rich history of his club.
Seven minutes were l eft in Huddersfield’s penultimate match of the season with the scores locked at 1-1 and Chelsea laying siege to the Huddersfield goal when Cesc Fabregas swung in a corner from the right. Marcos Alonso tried to help it on at the near post, then an almighty goalmouth scramble ensued. After what seemed like an eternity of blocked shots and flying bodies, the ball ballooned into the air and Chelsea centre-half Andreas Christensen rose to meet it.
Christensen was on the edge of the six-yard box and he directed his header firmly towards the top left hand corner of the net. Lossl was on his toes, slightly wrong-footed but somehow managed to reach out his right arm and get a strong hand to the ball. He pushed the header on to the post and it was hacked to safety by a defender.
Ten minutes later, the final whistle sounded. The draw took Huddersfield to 37 points, four clear of Swansea, the only one of the bottom three who could have caught them. They were safe. Huddersfield cancelled their flight back north and took the coach home so they could have a party. Lossl was man of the match.
‘It’s nice to have that as something to be remembered for,’ Lossl says, a grin creeping across his face. ‘When I look back at the footage, I can’t believe I got so much credit because I think there are eight guys saving the ball in that scramble, not just me. But it’s really nice. It’s fun to look back to. The real Huddersfield fans will always remember these moments from the season and that’s one of them.’
Lossl’s story, though, is not a onedimensional catalogue of moments like that. He has been an unqualified success in Yorkshire and such an impressive performer that Huddersfield moved quickly to turn his loan from Mainz into a permanent deal ahead of t his season but he has had to overcome setbacks and adversity, too.
It is, he says, one of the reasons why he and his club have been such a good fit. There is something of the underdog about both of them. They have had to fight for what t hey have. They have had to rebound from adversity. And when they have shown the stomach for the fight, they have emerged stronger for it.
‘A couple of times in my career I have had some blows and had to build myself up again,’ he says. ‘I don’t think many people expected a lot from me when I came to the Premier League. I came out of nowhere. If you ask 90 per cent of the Huddersfield fans, I don’t think they knew me before I came.’
The issue of the trials a goalkeeper faces is particularly pertinent to Lossl because he took over from Loris Karius at Mainz when the Liverpool goalkeeper moved to Anfield. Lossl watched as horror enveloped Karius at the Champions League final in Kiev in May and found it uncomfortable viewing. Every goalkeeper has ghosts and Lossl is no different.
‘It must have been horrible for him,’ Lossl says. ‘I can’t imagine the pressure that has been on him the last couple of months. You hope a guy like that will be able to handle the pressure and come back again. I never played a Champions League final but you can relate to making that mistake in a difficult moment when the spotlight is on you. ‘But that’s the job as well. If the spotlight wasn’t on us, would my save against Chelsea have been remembered? You take that. We know that you have to save 10 balls for every mistake you make but if you make that one mistake which counts, the spotlight is there. I work with a mental coach and I know a lot of my colleagues do because you need to be tough. You try to forget these mistakes as soon as you can. ‘In my early years in Denmark, when I played in the league for Midtjylland in one of those times when we struggled, I made a big mistake when I mistimed a save and the ball went through my hands for a goal. The next match, there was another mistake. I didn’t come out when I should have come out and they scored. ‘Then, in the third game, in the last 10 minutes of the first half, a player comes in and shoots and it was an easy ball but it went in the sun and I flapped my hands and it went in. That was tough. But then we changed it up in the second half and I had a save and we won 2-1 so all was good.
‘ Confidence can be fragile but that’s where you become the best if you are not affected by that. If you look at the best goalkeepers, somehow in the mind they are always the best. It is something you need to build up. It’s part of being a goalkeeper.’
Lossl, 29, went to the World Cup with Denmark as back-up to Kasper Schmeichel and, even though he did not play a minute, he gained satisfaction and even a measure of fulfilment and the experience has only whetted Lossl’s appetite.
He has never been ahead of Schmeich el in the Denmark selection process but he is determined that will change. He knows what it is to fight. Things have not always been as positive as they were last season.
‘ When I was younger I was in Denmark’s Under- 21 side in the build-up to the European Championships in 2011,’ says Lossl. ‘I was the first choice for two years. I was even the captain at one stage. Then we lost a cup final with Midtjylland and I was left out of my club side.
‘When the tournament came around, I was on the bench. I was
‘WE ARE STILL UNDERDOGS BUT WE KNOW WE CAN DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN’
young and everything had been going well and my agent had said there were clubs interested me and if I played well in t he U21s tournament, he was sure he’d get me there. And then I didn’t play and so nothing happened.
‘I came back to Midtjylland and started on the bench for the next 10 matches. That was tough. I had to change and build it up again and show what I was capable of. I was back in the team after eight league matches.
‘It’s still on my mind. It was a big disappointment but it also made me stronger. I have had a mental coach for some time now and, if you can stay in there and be in the moment and be true to what you normally believe in and normally do, you will get stronger and this will only benefit you.
‘I give a lot of credit for this to my successes last year in Huddersfield because suddenly I was playing for a team where the coach believed in me and I had personal success on the team and the style we played in was a perfect fit.’
Since Denmark’s exit from the World Cup, Lossl has been on holiday with his wife and children. Now he is back and ready to try to write last season’s fairy tale all over again. They are no longer novices but they are still the bookmakers’ second favourites after Cardiff to be relegated. ‘It is always the second season that is more difficult,’ Lossl says. ‘But you now have a base of players who have played a season in the Premier League with al l t he pressure of being underdogs. The club have brought in a few new players so in that way we should be better off than last season. ‘But I know we’re going to be the underdogs again and it’s going to be extraordinary if we do it again. It’s going to be similar but I truly do believe we can do it because of the experience we have and the clear plan of what we want to do. We have to use those experiences and listen to the coaching staff. ‘I feel very proud of what I and we achieved last season. I’m more confident because of it. I know what I’m up to now. I feel pretty good. I spent six weeks in Russia looking at somebody else on the pitch. Now, I’m looking forward to getting out there myself.’