Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Hugo Lloris was being harassed in the pre-match warm-up before facing Aston Villa – by his own goalkeeping coach.
That’s according to Football.London’s Tottenham correspondent Alasdair Gold, who was speaking on the Gold and Guest talk Tottenham podcast.
Gold noted that Tottenham were showing interesting tactics before their game with Aston Villa even kicked off.
Backup goalkeepers Pierluigi Gollini and Brandon Austin were both launching crosses towards Lloris in the pre-match warm-up.
Goalkeeping coach Rui Barbosa was then physically harassing Lloris as he deal with those high balls.
Given that Villa were utilising long throw-ins from Matty Cash, Barbosa wanted Lloris completely prepared – and Gold felt it worked perfectly.
“It was interesting to see even before the game, Hugo Lloris was getting a proper workout from Gollini and Brandon Austin,” said Gold. “They were firing in deep balls into the box and the goalkeeping coach – Rui Barbosa – he was really jostling and harassing and banging into Lloris essentially, to try and put him off.”
“You could see, we kind of realised as the game went on, it was all preparation for the Cash long throws and the balls into the box. I think that was the key thing – Spurs were so well prepared,” he added.
Villa did end up scoring from a cross, but it was a low ball fizzed across the near post rather than a high ball.
You would think that Lloris had seen it all and learned everything in his lengthy career as a goalkeeper.
Barbosa clearly felt that Lloris needed to be absolutely prepared for Villa launching the ball into the box, hence his training tactics.
Lloris will have been hoping for a clean sheet, but at least Tottenham won – and maybe we will see more specific tactics in pre-game warm-ups this season.
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