Alisson Becker reveals he turned down a move to Napoli because of the "rivalry" with Roma and explains he'd "trained my whole life" for his Liverpool save on Arkadiusz Milik.
The Brazilian faces the Partenopei this evening in the Champions League and revealed that Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis pitched the club to the then-Roma shot-stopper in the summer of 2018.
Alisson Becker reveals he turned down a move to Napoli because of the "rivalry" with Roma and explains he'd "trained my whole life" for his Liverpool save on Arkadiusz Milik.
The Brazilian faces the Partenopei this evening in the Champions League and revealed that Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis pitched the club to the then-Roma shot-stopper in the summer of 2018.
“Napoli tried to bid for me, the President came to me, but if I went to Naples from Roma, I was going to put myself in a tough situation in Italy,” Alisson told The Independent.
“It’s not an official derby, but there’s a big rivalry between the teams. I admire Napoli a lot, they have a top squad and it’s always hard to play against them, especially when they are at home.
"But I was committed to joining Liverpool.”
The shot stopper then recalled his memories of the crucial save from Napoli’s Arkadiusz Milik at Anfield that kept Liverpool in the competition last season.
“If we concede now, there is no time to do a comeback, which we are specialists at. This is it. Everything depends on this. I trained for that kind of moment all my life.
"I was ready. I got into the right position and then I was waiting for my defenders to clear the ball, but it was a difficult cross to keep out and then I saw the ball fall to Milik.
"I tried to close the angle as much as I could, make myself big and I forced him to stop and shoot quickly. I think if you ask forwards, they’ll say this is the hardest thing to deal with in that situation.
"Then the ball came straight to me, but that’s because I attacked it, I bought time, I made the situation complicated for him. If I had stayed in position, he would have had space and time to look and choose his spot.”
Napoli only needed a draw to go through to the Round of 16, whereas Liverpool had to win. Becker’s save kept the game at 1-0 and Liverpool qualified, going on to win the competition.