FeatureSweet tooth, feeling invincible and an impossible celebration - tales from 'Alisson: My Story'

The three-part exclusive, which is available to watch in full on All Red Video now, explores the life and career of Reds goalkeeper Alisson Becker.

It includes special interviews with the No.1 himself, family and friends, former and current teammates and coaches, and more.

Read several of the stories revealed during the filming below…

The goalkeeping tradition…

It was seemingly inevitable Alisson would end up between the posts. His family is full of goalkeepers, going back through the generations.

One of his great-grandfathers was an amateur stopper, his father was a respected ’keeper – with ‘a crazy style’ – and his mother played the position in handball during her school days.

“Then came my brother [Muriel],” explains Alisson. “My brother I think started because he watched a lot my father playing in goal, and he enjoyed that and he was quite good as well so he started to play for the clubs in the area that we lived.

“And I grew up watching my brother playing and then came me, the other goalie of the family.”

Alisson has a sweet tooth…

When Alisson’s talent took him towards a professional career in football as a teenager, he had a small sacrifice to make: his sweet tooth.

Chocolate cookies and brigadeiro – a traditional Brazilian dessert – were among his favourites until sporting fitness had to take precedence.

“I fought and I struggled a little bit at the beginning with that, with making the hard choice to be fit, to avoid these things,” he recalls. “At the beginning I was a little bit bigger than the other ones, heavier than the other ones, maybe that was a negative factor for me at that time.

“But as soon as everything started to be more professional for me, when I turned 16 maybe, I got the responsibility and all the things to say no to the good things of life that could be bad for me in my career – including the sweets!”

He worried his Liverpool opportunity might be lost...

Alisson was in the AS Roma side that travelled to Anfield to face the Reds in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals in April 2018.

At the time, he was aware of speculation that Liverpool could try to sign him that summer.

So, a 5-2 defeat for the visitors that night not only damaged Roma’s chances of advancing to the final but, in his mind, Alisson’s prospects of becoming a Red.

He details: “There were some rumours about Liverpool being interested in me. Nothing too serious but as a player you start to imagine, ‘Is a big club maybe coming for me in the summer? Maybe an opportunity? So I have to go there and give my best.’

“Then you lose 5-2 and think, ‘It’s gone!’”

Regardless, Kopites had made such an impression on Alisson that he decided then that if Liverpool did make an approach, it would certainly be the club for him.

“The noise was so loud, it gets inside your head,” he continues. “The way the supporters were pushing the team forward, it was impossible that night that we – Roma – would win the game.

“It was nice as well to feel that because of the rumours, the supporters started to wish that I come to play for Liverpool. At the second half, when I changed sides to play at the Kop, a few supporters clapped me and I felt, ‘OK, maybe they want me to come.’

“It was special and at that moment I said, ‘If this club comes to me, it’s definitely a yes.’”

‘We were like kids in a candy shop’…

The switch to Merseyside did, of course, materialise just a few months later.

Identified as the man to be Liverpool’s long-term goalkeeper, Alisson needed only one training session with his new team to show the wisdom of the club’s decision.

Jürgen Klopp, then-Reds manager, reveals: “When he arrived, I remember his first session was in Evian, he joined us in the training camp.

“We did a little shooting exercise and it was like four or five times he made a few saves and we were like, ‘What?!’ Like, shots from 10 or 12 yards to the far corner and he was just, whoosh! ‘Oh, that’s possible? Great!’

“We were a bit like kids in a candy shop with, ‘Oh, what did we get here?!’”

He felt invincible in Madrid…

Alisson’s debut season at Liverpool ended with the Champions League trophy being hoisted above his head at Estadio Metropolitano.

A key figure throughout the Reds’ journey to that showpiece clash with Tottenham Hotspur in June 2019, he was in impenetrable form in the final too, providing a string of excellent saves as Klopp’s men won 2-0.

He remembers: “I always say that I never wanted that match to finish but the guys said, ‘Yeah, but then you don’t win the game, you don’t win the trophy, never!’

“But it’s because I enjoyed so much that game and I had the feeling I would never concede in that game, because of the way the team was playing and because of my mood as well.

“Making the saves, having the chances, creating the chances, the atmosphere at the stadium… what a night. I enjoyed every minute of that game.”

What YNWA means to him…

“The message that the song has, I didn’t realise at the beginning but after when I looked at the lyrics, it’s really special,” Alisson says of the club’s anthem.

“The way Liverpool, [those] surrounding the club, supporters, people that work at the club, the way they live their lives, they live in the style of You’ll Never Walk Alone. They help each other, they don’t look only for themselves, they really mean it when they sing the song and that makes it even more special, because it’s not only a song.

“And I experienced that when I lost my dad. It was a perfect song for me and my family, that I was never walking alone, no matter what – even in the good times or in the bad times.

“This is something that you take for your life.”

The impossible celebration…

So much has been said and written already about May 16, 2021, the day Alisson became the first Liverpool ’keeper ever to score a goal.

Not just any goal either. A 95th-minute headed winner away at West Bromwich Albion that was crucial to the Reds’ Champions League qualification hopes for that season.

A moment of pure emotion that occurred soon after the sudden tragic passing of the No.1’s father.

A feat that Alisson’s mother, Magali – who watched it happen from her home in Brazil – was resigned to never experiencing.

“I always said that a goalkeeper’s mother can never celebrate a goal. She can’t,” she says. “A goalkeeper never scores.

“When the ball hit his head and he headed... I screamed like I’ve never screamed in my life. Neighbours could hear me, I didn’t care! I screamed all the time. I even lost my voice.”

He changed Klopp’s thinking…

Rules are there to be broken, some say.

And by infringing one of Klopp’s policies en route to matches, Alisson actually succeeded in altering his former boss’ outlook.

Klopp explains: “The younger version of mine, when we were in the bus to the stadium and somebody would have used a smart phone, I would have gone completely bonkers: ‘The game has started already, prepare, focus.’

“Ali only sat two rows behind me and we are on the way to a game and you hear him giggling on the phone and you think, ‘What is that?’ And Ali is talking to his daughter. An hour and 15 before a game and in this children’s voice he is talking to her.

“I realised that in my head it was like, ‘Yeah, if Ali thinks it’s alright, it’s alright probably. It’s what he needs, fine.’ And from that moment on I was much more relaxed in these moments.

“Everybody needs his own stuff and if it helps him to focus on a game when he is talking to his family and the babies at home, then it’s fine to me.”

The story behind his name…

Back to mum for this one.

Just why is this Liverpool legend called Alisson?

“I wanted to name him Ramses, which is a biblical name. But we thought Ramses was a weird name for a baby,” says Magali. “Such a strong name.

“So I told my mother it was going to be Alisson Ramses. It was like this. [Inspired] by reading, maybe, but there is no story. [For the beauty of the name], that’s it.”

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