Alisson could have been playing for Napoli against Liverpool tonight if his career had taken a different path, the goalkeeper has said.

The Liverpool keeper has revealed that Napoli tried to sign him after the Serie A club’s president Aurelio De Laurentiis approached him about switching teams in Italy.

Instead the Brazil keeper kept his word and signed for Liverpool in a £65million transfer in July 2018, which, according to The Independent, left De Laurentiis “livid”.

“Napoli tried to bid for me,” Alisson told the paper. “The president came to me, but if I went to Naples from Roma, I was going to put myself in a tough situation in Italy.

“It’s not an official derby, but there’s a big rivalry between the teams. I admire Napoli a lot, they have a top squad and it’s always hard to play against them, especially when they are at home.

“But I was committed to joining Liverpool.”

The 27-year-old, who had to sit out the start of the season after picking up a calf injury in the first game against Norwich, does though acknowledge that Napoli have played a huge part in his career.

Alisson has proved a huge thorn in the side of the Naples club having produced a wonder save at Anfield to deny Arkadiusz Milik in added on time to deny Napoli a place in the knockout stages.

“It’s no problem. I won’t get tired of it,” Alisson said, who explained what was going though his mind.

“If we concede now, there is no time to do a comeback, which we are specialists at,” he added. “This is it. Everything depends on this. I trained for that kind of moment all my life.

“I was ready. I got into the right position and then I was waiting for my defenders to clear the ball, but it was a difficult cross to keep out and then I saw the ball fall to Milik.

“I tried to close the angle as much as I could, make myself big and I forced him to stop and shoot quickly. I think if you ask forwards, they’ll say this is the hardest thing to deal with in that situation.

 

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“Then the ball came straight to me, but that’s because I attacked it, I bought time, I made the situation complicated for him. If I had stayed in position, he would have had space and time to look and choose his spot.”

He also played a starring role previous to that when he denied Napoli whilst still in the colours of Roma.

“They are part of the story of my career,” he said. “In March 2018, Roma had an away game in Naples and it was an awesome one for me as I made 11 saves in a big defensive performance, which is really important against Napoli.

“And then, here at Anfield, I think I put my name in the history of Liverpool with the save against them in a decisive match, an all-or-nothing moment, with our Champions League lives on the line. I put everything I had into that save and we put everything we had into that game.”

Alisson has also heaped praise on his understudy Adrian, whose seamless switch to become the number one whilst Alisson was injured.

Alisson added: “He helped Liverpool a lot with great performances, but me as well – there was no pressure on me to come back.

“I could have a pre-season, which I didn’t get a chance to do because of the Copa America and it was five weeks of hard work.

“I could spend time with my family, which is something that was sacrificed after the Champions League win and joining Brazil straight away.”