His brilliant debut with Liverpool in the prestigious competition in Europe made Caoimhin Kelleher being talked by more people at Liverpool. Will he stay in the team when Alisson is injured? Only time will tell.
When Kelleher started in the match against Ajax that night at Anfield, many observers questioned Juergen Klopp’s decision. Usually when Alisson is injured, the second goalkeeper who will replace him is Adrian.
Klopp tried to answer the amazement of many people by bringing in Kelleher in this very important match. The German manager explained his decision to choose Kelleher, because of Kelleher’s natural ability to control the ball.
“I really think Adrian has done a fantastic job for us, he keeps lots of clean sheets, plays everywhere. But now we need natural football playing skills from Caoimhin Kelleher.”, said Klopp as reported by Skysports.com
After the match against Ajax at Anfield that night, Klopp felt a great relief. So the first player to get a hug was Kelleher. Kelleher’s passing accuracy that night was 71 per cent, much higher than Adrian’s average of 65 per cent for three Premier League and Champions League appearances this season.
Klopp proved his belief that Kelleher is a good goalkeeper. “We made that decision but you never know how they will handle it. I am very happy with how calm he is and how good he is.” Klopp said\as reported by Liverpoolfc.com (4/12/20).
All Liverpool fans also saw how Kelleher was able to keep his goal from being conceded. He did it twice in that match and he did it in an extraordinary way to beat Ajax’s two golden opportunities to break into the Reds’ goal.
Who exactly is Caoimhin Kelleher?
Kelleher was born in Cork, Ireland on November 23, 1998. This 188 cm tall young man joined Liverpool on a professional contract since July 1, 2019.
Kelleher is the younger brother of Wrexham defender Fiacre Kelleher, a former Celtic academy defender. Kelleher made only his fifth appearance for the club. Kelleher’s previous four appearances have come in domestic cup competitions, with the last of them being in the FA Cup against Shrewsbury Town last season.
From Cork, Ireland, Kelleher moved to Liverpool in 2015 at the age of 17 from Irish club Ringmahon Rangers. At that time, there were two clubs interested in this young Irish talent, namely Aston Villa and Blackburn.
The unique thing is that Kelleher actually started his football career as a striker. He started playing as a goalkeeper when his team, Ringmahon U-15, was short on goalkeepers.
Former Kelleher coach at Ringmahon, Eddie Harrington, explained that by becoming a striker, Kelleher could understand the mindset of the opposing striker. During his time as a striker, Kelleher has scored 20-30 goals per season.
Perhaps this is why Kelleher is so good at reading the direction of the ball against the opposing strikers in a match. After that there was only three years between Kelleher playing his first game in goal and signing for Liverpool.
During his time at the Liverpool Academy, he has never moved on loan to any club. Liverpool chose to send Poland Under-21 international Kamil Grabara on loan to Danish club AGF Aarhus.
Kelleher himself remains active with the Liverpool team at a young age and most recently he was the Liverpool U-23 goalkeeper. In his activities with his country’s national team, Kelleher has played 10 times for the Republic of Ireland U-21 team, and was first named in the senior squad in November 2018, although he has yet to get his first stamp.
The next agenda for the Liverpool squad is to host Wolves at Anfield in the Premier League. Kelleher is the favorite to defend his position in the match.
