Bernard Lama: Paris Saint-Germain will never win Champions League with Sirigu
Sirigu’s performance in PSG’s Champions League Round of 16 second leg against Chelsea has drawn a lot of criticism, with the French press having found him the worst PSG player on the night.
Lama was a guest on RMC Sport’s radio show Luis Attaque, where host and former France International Luis Fernandez requested Lama’s opinion on Sirigu. The latter thus let loose, blasting the Italy international.
“From a general standpoint and personally, I don’t like goalkeepers who are too tall [like Sirigu] because they can’t move well enough within their penalty area,” Lama said on Luis Attaque.
“But when talking about his ability on the ball [with his feet], he [Sirigu] is not good enough.
“Goalkeepers today [in general] are trained to only be goalkeepers, and not footballers; and that is a grave mistake being committed by most coaching staffs.
“Because of this, he [Sirigu] doesn’t read and understand the game well enough.
“When he needs to play out of the back and apply the necessary vision to cleanly execute it, Sirigu is incapable of doing it; he doesn’t have the ability.
“It already happened against Barcelona [in the group stages] and PSG conceded a goal because of it.
“Sirigu is like many other goalkeepers, very good at the domestic level but [he] has not yet shown that he has the ability to shine at the international level and indeed take [Gianluigi] Buffon’s Italy shirt or win PSG a European trophy.”
Lama kept goal seven years for PSG, spread over two separate stints between 1992 and 2000. Lama remains one of the rare players to have won Paris Saint-Germain’s only european trophy to date, the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1996.