Friday, December 3, 2021 at 5:12 PM• Jordi Tomasowa • Last update: 17:12

John Achterberg has signed a new contract with Liverpool until 2024 and will continue to manage the goalkeeper coaches at Liverpool in the future, Jürgen Klopp confirms to English media. The Reds announced on Tuesday that Brazilian legend Cláudio Taffarel will start as a goalkeeper coach at the club. However, this is not at the expense of Achterberg, as it turns out.

The 55-year-old Taffarel will accompany the goalkeepers of Liverpool together with Achterberg and Jack Robinson. Klopp is looking forward to the reinforcements for his staff. “Achterberg is very open to this kind of thing and is really happy with it,” said the German coach on Liverpool’s official site. “He has met Taffarel before with the Brazilian national team. Achterberg is an encyclopedia when it comes to goalkeepers, he knows so much about everything that has to do with goalkeeping. The arrival of Taffarel will be good for Achterberg and Robinson so that they can exchange ideas and analyses. Having different cultures is important on the training field. We have Dutch, English, Germans and now also a bit of a Brazilian influence in the coaching staff. That certainly helps.”

Taffarel is currently also the goalkeeper coach of the Brazil national team. He will combine his duties at Liverpool with the position he holds at the Brazilian Football Association. “We now have the best imaginable in many positions,” Klopp said. “We want to create our own goalkeeping philosophy and we thought it would be wise to have a goalkeeper coach who has been a world class player and who already works with two of the best goalkeepers in the world (Alisson Becker and Ederson Moraes, ed. .), to add to the staff. We spoke to Alisson and he was very pleased. Then we spoke to Taffarel and he loved the idea too.”

Taffarel played 101 caps for Brazil, with which he won the World Cup in 1994 and four years later kept the Netherlands out of the World Cup final by stopping the penalties of Phillip Cocu and Ronald de Boer in the penalty series. He represented several clubs in Europe, including Parma and Galatasaray, before retiring from goalkeeping in 2003. At Liverpool, Taffarel will therefore work with Achterberg. The Dutch goalkeeper coach has been employed by the Premier League club since 2009.