Ham-fisted Karius PR exercise has further harmed Liverpool

The Champions League final was arguably the nadir of Loris Karius’ professional career.

In the biggest game of his life, his two mistakes were incredibly amateur for a player at the elite level.

Given he was the choice of Jurgen Klopp ahead of Simon Mignolet, the German has to take some responsibility, though he will surely not have expected Karius to have failed in such spectacular fashion.

In the wake of the final and Karius’ subsequent upset, a multitude of theories have been put forward as to the reason why he was so off colour on the night.

Pantomime villain, Sergio Ramos, had already been blamed for putting Mo Salah’s World Cup in jeopardy, and with video coming to light of him accidentally striking Karius, and the keeper, allegedly, complaining of a problem at the time, a theory of concussion was put forward.

The problem?

Such details and exploration of the theory didn’t take place until over a week after the final.

It doesn’t really serve any purpose coming so late after the event but, clearly, given the wave of public animosity towards Karius, Liverpool thought a confirmed diagnosis of concussion would go some way to assuaging the masses to not be so hard on him.

However, such a ham-fisted way of going about it has left Liverpool and Karius himself open to further ridicule.

At best it’s been a PR exercise gone wrong and, frankly, getting the news out there that Karius was injured doesn’t change the fact that Liverpool lost the final fair and square.

Yes, Ramos in particular was walking the line between what is and what is not acceptable on a football pitch, but the ref was perfectly happy with his conduct. Trying to lay all of the blame at his door is a little disingenuous.

If the only purpose is to ‘calm the situation down,’ well Liverpool are already apparently in the market for a new custodian, so the likelihood is that Karius won’t even be in the firing line from the start of the season anyway.

The wider issue here of course is the inherent need to absolve Karius of all blame.

Everyone makes mistakes. It happens.

The best way to deal with it is to pick up the baton straight away and go again. 

Making such a bruhaha about it only succeeds in making Karius more of a victim than he already was.

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