Barcelona goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny worked with Liverpool shot-stopper Alisson Becker when the pair were at AS Roma. And several years later, both kept clean sheets in the Champions League earlier this week.
On the opposite side of the draw to Liverpool, Barcelona won against Benfica in Portugal despite Pau Curbasi being sent off. Alisson, meanwhile, produced a record nine saves to somehow keep out PSG before Harvey Elliott’s late winner.
Now, though, an old social media post from Szczesny has resurfaced where he correctly predicted Alisson’s rise. The Liverpool number one was briefly the most expensive goalkeeper in the world when he signed for the Reds for around $85m (£66m/€80m) but he has fully justified that outlay.
“Training in the rain with Alisson,” Szczesny posted on Instagram in January 2017, around 18 months before the Brazilian moved to Anfield from Serie A. “Great guy and a fantastic goalkeeper. Soon to be one of the best in the world.”
“I’ve got no words, to be honest,” Elliott said of Alisson, who was later named the Champions League player of the week, post-match. “This guy, he’s unbelievable, the best in the world.
“Each and every game he shows it, [he] keeps us in so many games. Tonight it’s my opportunity to repay this man. Without him, I don’t know where we’d be. Hopefully he can keep [saving] and hopefully we can keep finishing chances. It was a great team performance.”
(Image: Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“All these shots from outside the box were with a certain speed that you only see with top players,” Arne Slot added. “We have them as well but you could see it with them as well [and] that’s why Alisson still had to make a lot of big saves.
“We were lucky in the first half that the goal [Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s disallowed effort] was fractionally offside… and in the end, we were already in the game three, four or five times. I felt like, ‘We can hurt them in transition,’ but we didn’t. But we waited until the last moment and then we hurt them.”
Liverpool.com says: There is no doubt that Alisson is the best goalkeeper out there. There has been some talk of him moving to Saudi Arabia at some point but that should be a long way off. Like Mohamed Salah, he is simply too good not to be at the top of the game for as long as possible.
