Wijnaldum Defends Alisson: “Everyone Can Make a Mistake”

The biggest storyline following Liverpool’s 4-1 loss to Manchester City on Sunday was the two goals surrendered immediately after misplayed passes by their goalkeeper, Alisson Becker. Though it’s easy to lay much of the blame for the result at Alisson’s feet, Georginio Wijnaldum thinks the rest of the team shares the blame for not overcoming Alisson’s mistakes.

In an interview with the Liverpool FC website, Gini was quick to point out that Alisson has been Liverpool’s saving grace on many occasions, and you can’t expect a keeper, or any player for that matter, to be perfect. You have to be able to overcome the mistake and get the game back on track.

“When you play football, you always know everyone can make a mistake. If you look at the whole season, I don’t know how many players made a mistake,” said Wijnaldum. “And if you look at the other side, he [Alisson] saved us so much. It will always happen that a goalkeeper makes a mistake. You just try to fix it in the game.”

Regardless of their keeper’s mistakes, Liverpool still had a chance to rescue a result from the match, and Wijnaldum was disappointed that the rest of the team couldn’t rally to turn things around. He was especially disappointed that they couldn’t spare Alisson the blame given how often his heroics have saved them.

“We were more disappointed that we couldn’t change it around for him because if you look at since he was here how many times he saved us – he won trophies for us – it’s difficult that we couldn’t change it around for him.”