Champions League: Doctors Explain Liverpool’s Goalkeeper Performance

Liverpool goalkeeper, Loris Karius suffered concussion during the Champions League final against Real Madrid that may have impacted negatively to his performance, doctors in the United States have said.

Karius made two crucial mistakes which contributed to Madrid’s 3-1 victory in the final in Kiev.

The 24-year-old had collided with Real defender Sergio Ramos in the 48th minute in the second half of the final – when the score was goalless and may have caused the German to suffer a concussion later in the match.

The Spanish top flight side scored their first goal a little more than two minutes after Ramos and Karius collision. The German tried to roll the ball out to a defender, only for Madrid striker Karim Benzema to stick out his boot and redirect the throw into the net.

Karius made a further error in the closing stages of the game, allowing a long-range effort from Gareth Bale to slip through his grasp to seal Madrid’s victory.

Karius underwent scans at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and medical staff believe the concussion sustained during the game affected his performance.

Dr. Ross Zafonte, a specialist at the Mass General, after reviewing the “game film”, a “physical examination” of the player and “objective metrics,” came to the conclusion that the 24-year-old had suffered from “visual spatial dysfunction”, a process which hampers a person’s ability to process visual information about where objects are in space.

“After carefully reviewing game film and integrating a detailed history — including his reported present and immediate post-contact subjective symptoms — physical examination and objective metrics, we have concluded that Mr. Karius sustained a concussion during the match,” Mass General said in a statement.

“At the time of our evaluation, Mr. Karius’s principal residual symptoms and objective signs suggested that visual spatial dysfunction existed and likely occurred immediately following the event. Additional symptomatic and objectively noted areas of dysfunction also persisted. It could be possible that such deficits would affect performance,” the statement added.

In the aftermath of the game, Karius received death threats, prompting a police investigation, and told fans he was “infinitely sorry”.

Recall that Ramos was also heavily criticised for the tackle which forced Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah to leave the pitch 30 minutes into the Champions League final. Over 500,000 people signed an online petition for the Spain international to be punished by THE European football governing body UEFA for the play.