Liverpool signing Giorgi Mamardashvili will only arrive at the club in 2025 but there is a great deal of optimism about what he will bring to the team.
Mamardashvili was recently named on the 10-man shortlist for the Yachine Trophy, which is awarded to the world’s best men’s goalkeeper at the annual Ballon d’Or ceremony.
Dermot Corrigan, La Liga correspondent for The Athletic believes that Mamardashvili is well-suited to playing in the Premier League.
“Sometimes goalkeepers who come from other leagues might be more used to staying on their line, not coming for crosses, not coming off their line to engage with strikers – I wouldn’t be worried about that.
“He is kind of a traditional goalkeeper. At Valencia, he hasn’t played under coaches in the more modern school of building it out from the back, splitting the centre-backs and the goalkeeper being a playmaker from the back.
“I don’t think he’s done that for Valencia or Georgia – I’m not saying that he’s not capable of it but it’s something that he hasn’t really had that much experience of so far in his career,” Corrigan told LiverpoolFC.com.
Corrigan feels that the Georgian has the makings of a penalty-takers nightmare at Liverpool not only because of his physical attributes but because of how he thinks about his game.
“He’s a big, physically imposing guy with a lot of personality, he likes to be involved in the game,” Corrigan said.
“Penalties are where goalkeepers get a chance to shine. He saved three of six penalties faced in La Liga last season, which is a pretty good record.
“Valencia’s goalkeeping coach is Jose Manuel Ochotorena – he was at Liverpool with Rafa and also with the Spain national team all through their golden age, winning the 2010 World Cup and two Euros, working with Iker Casillas and Pepe Reina.
“So he’s had that technical grounding. He’s come in with the raw talent that he always had – physically he’s huge and he has the reflexes and everything – but he’s been able to work for a couple of years at Valencia with one of the top goalkeeping coaches in the world, you could argue, which has obviously been good for him.”
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Corrigan believes that Valencia brought in the stopper with the express purpose of selling him on for a big profit.
The move to Liverpool seems like it has come at the right time for both player and club.
“He had a bit of an unusual route to Valencia,” Corrigan commented.
“I think they did well to snap him up and it was part of Valencia policy under their current president Peter Lim of identifying really good international young players who would be useful for the team and then at some stage they would be able to sell on at a profit.
“He was seen as a project. He was very young when he broke into the Valencia team and obviously had super potential. He was raw and needed to gain experience and to improve maybe technically on his goalkeeping, but he was always seen as a guy who would be good for Valencia in the short term and in the medium to long term would probably end up moving to a Champions League club.
“He’s a really good goalkeeper and there has been a lot of talk that at some stage he would leave Valencia probably to go to the Champions League – it was a little about which level of club he would go to. But after the Euros when he was excellent for Georgia, it was expected that he would end in the Premier League. Liverpool is a great move for him and a good move for Liverpool as well.”
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