CLEAN MACH INF
The year is 2021, and you’ve been tasked with creating the perfect goalkeeper. In an ideal world, or if you just happen to be Bonnie Tyler, several attributes leap out at you like the refrain of a song. He’s got to be strong. He’s got to be fast. He’s probably larger than life. You need a hero.
Not one borne of flashy egotism, but the reliable, focused type who always wants to put a shift in for his team-mates. The one who’s able to keep his head when others around him crumble quicker than a block of Caerphilly. Basically, you need Alisson Becker.
Let’s start with his honours: the Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup and Copa America in 2019, followed by the Premier League title in 2020. Then there are the individual prizes: FIFA Goalkeeper of the Year, Golden Glove gongs domestically and at international level, nominations for the Ballon d’Or and spots in back-to-back FIFPro World11s, alongside accolades from pretty much every major publication on the planet.
Some players simply find themselves in the right place at the right time to lift silverware. Far fewer can consider themselves natural winners who seem destined to gobble glory wherever they go.
FourFourTwo last caught up with Alisson in November 2018, just as Jurgen Klopp’s red machine was marauding towards European domination. “What’s life if not fighting for your dreams?” he pondered then. “I dream of winning the Champions League.” Within six months he had done just that, banishing Liverpool fans’ haunting memories of Loris Karius in the previous season’s showpiece defeat to Real Madrid.
Today, the Brazilian’s philosophical mood remains as we prepare to discuss this term’s Champions League campaign, following the Merseysiders’ miserable last-16 ousting by Atletico Madrid in 2019-20 – the second leg of which Alisson sat out with a hip problem. Injury niggles aside, such blips are
