“I recommended Ter Stegen when Brendan [Rodgers] was here, he was at ‘Gladbach and I told Brendan about him. So, a few weeks later Brendan came to me and said ‘I got a call of Chris Houghton and he says this goalie playing for ‘Gladbach is a good goalie’ So I said ‘yeah, that’s what I tried to say to you!’ but then of course, he goes Barca.”
This happened a few years after Achterberg had spoken with Damien Comolli about two other excellent goalkeepers who he thought The Reds should be looking to sign.
“I said [to Comolli] ‘I did see two really good goalies I like’. One was Neuer, he was with Schalke then and the other one was Handanovic. So he said ‘Neuer is going to Bayern, that is already done’ but obviously I didn’t have this information when I told him. Handanovic was at Udinese but obviously Comolli didn’t do much with my suggestion and then he got sold to Inter Milan so yeah, that’s how it works sometimes.”
Redmen Reacts
Hopefully Liverpool don’t need to bring in a new goalkeeper for a long, long time but if they ever do, it seems like they really should take the advice of Achterberg when it comes to recruiting any future number one.