Former Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius has admitted he considered retiring after his disastrous performance in the 2018 Champions League final.
Welt reports on comments from the goalkeeper today as he’s once again reflected on his career and the misery of his post Champions League final horror show.
Liverpool disaster
The goalkeeper is now at Schalke and happy, after a difficult few years following his spell at Liverpool, who he joined in 2016.
The intention had been for him to be Liverpool’s first choice goalkeeper for the years to come but his performance in the defeat to Madrid in the 2018 Champions League final put an end to that.
The German goalkeeper was deemed to be at fault for two of the goals that Liverpool conceded – the first and the third – when he saw his throw blocked by Karim Benzema and then later mishandled Gareth Bale’s 40-yard strike.
It was later determined that he was suffering from concussion, but Karius admits that made little difference to him personally.
“At times, I had to force myself to go to work and just tried to get through the day somewhat normally,” he told newspapers belonging to the Funke Media Group.
“Even now, I don’t know what I should have done differently. I just felt empty; I even thought about retiring, but I was only 25 years old and couldn’t simply stay at home. During that phase, I felt like no one understood me.”
High to low
Up until that point, the goalkeeper, now 33-years-old, had enjoyed a successful career, working his way up to the move to Liverpool in 2016. The crash down from that high, was something difficult for him to comprehend.
“Up until that point, my career had been on a steep upward trajectory, but then I suddenly came crashing down, hitting rock bottom,” he added.
“It was extremely tough, partly because, being in my mid-twenties at the time, I wasn’t as emotionally grounded as I am today. And quite honestly: during that period, I lost the joy of playing football. I had no desire to train or play anymore.”
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