Arriving from Panathinaikos for £2m in 2018, Odysseas Vlachodimos has now become Benfica’s number one goalkeeper, holding that role for the past four years.
While he has faced a number of prestigious sides, few will be as big as what is waiting for him around the corner in the Champions League, as he prepares himself to try and keep out the Liverpool attack.
Comprised of the likes of Sadio Mané, Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino, Jürgen Klopp’s strike force is one of the most feared and prolific in the world.
Asked by Kicker in Germany about how Liverpool can be stopped, the Greece international broke everything down for the magazine.
He said: “As a team and individually, Liverpool are the measure of all things. Every position is occupied outstandingly, even in their attack with Salah, Mané, Diogo Jota. In addition, Jürgen Klopp is a top manager. We can’t afford to make any mistakes, no matter how small. We have to be wide awake and take advantage of every opportunity up front.
“And above all, we should always believe in ourselves. We’ve already shown that we can be an unpleasant opponent and annoy or even beat top teams. Especially in front of a home audience in our cauldron in Lisbon.”
The first of two legs will take place on Tuesday evening in Portugal, and Vlachodimos believes his team have a chance, even if most will write them off before the game has even started.
He added: “No matter what these games say on paper: we are living our dream this season and don’t want to stop doing so anytime soon.”
Kicker immediately point out that this might be a bit too optimistic, but Vlachodimos was having none of it.
He continued: “Why should it? We had a tough group with FC Bayern and Barcelona. Despote this, we made it through second behind Munich and also beat Ajax Amsterdam, who are also one of the top teams in Europe, in the round of 16. Now, the next nice, difficult opponent is coming our way, which we don’t want to tackle with any less self confidence.”
We’ll have to see if the goalkeeper and his teammates can live up to their own self-belief, but crazier things have happened in European football, and no one is exempt from the odd upset, even Liverpool.
