Caoimhin Kelleher‘s career could have played out much differently if the Premier League never entered lockdown, which forced Liverpool to veto a loan move.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 saw drastic changes brought into effect across the Premier League – reflecting lockdown measures enforced across the UK.
While training sessions were ‘socially distanced’ and games played behind closed doors, there was also the lingering concern of players being ruled out if they tested positive for the virus.
That left clubs taking a different approach to squad-building, with more numbers required to avoid issues with unavoidable absences.
One such scenario at Liverpool saw Kelleher denied the loan move all involved agreed would have been his next step – only for him to stick around and impress goalkeeping coach John Achterberg enough to become long-term No. 2.
“One stage I said to him, ‘I don’t want to say much, but you’re better than De Gea’,” Achterberg recalled on the Yours, Mine, Away podcast.
“‘The only difference is he’s playing every week and you haven’t got that yet. But your speed, reactions and your technical ability are much better than his’.
“I’m not much wrong up until now and hopefully he keeps doing that.
“Then we had also the problems like we didn’t send him out on loan – we wanted to send him out on loan but obviously then Covid started.
“We said ‘we cannot send him, because we cannot leave himself short if one or two break down’. You need cover.
“So we kept him. And that year obviously Adrian had a few issues with games and stuff and Kelleher was already better in training every day.
“We needed to make a decision, we talked with all the coaches, with the boss, and thought ‘OK, he’s better in training every day, we might as well give him the chance and see if it happens’.”
Kelleher had previously only started in the domestic cups, with four appearances in the 2019/20 season, but he rose to the occasion on his first start of the following campaign.
“We changed Adrian – who is a really unbelievable guy, works his ball off and also a decent goalie – and we kept Kelleher in the game against Ajax in the Champions League,” Achterberg continued.
“We had to win the game and we won 1-0. He did well and he got more chances to play, the League Cup games and last year (when he started 26 games in 2023/24).”
During his interview, Achterberg struck upon the issue Liverpool had in juggling Kelleher’s ambitions and the quality he offered as Alisson‘s backup.
While he will join Brentford on a permanent basis this summer, with an £18 million deal agreed, Achterberg used Chelsea‘s world-record deal for Kepa Arrizabalaga as an example of how they had struggled to allow Kelleher to leave.
“At one stage obviously Kelleher wanted to be the No. 1 and be out there,” the Dutchman said.
“And I said to the boss, ‘we cannot just let him go, we need someone if Ali is not there, we need to win trophies’.
“There’s not someone to get to do this. Kepa cost £72 million and he is better than Kepa, you cannot let him go for £10 million because you cannot get a goalie who can do the job for £10 million.
“So yeah, it was shit, but he could not go at that moment. The club obviously made the right choice for us and in the end he also played a lot of games.”
