Player Profile: Hugo Lloris

Last updated : 09 December 2013 By Allan Sharoe

Hugo Lloris

Footballer

Hugo Lloris is a French footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for English club Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League and is the captain of the French national team.

Born: December 26, 1986 (age 26), Nice, France

Height: 1.88 m 

Weight: 78 kg 

Salary: 4.56 million EUR (2012)

Current Teams: Tottenham Hotspur F.C. (#25 / Goalkeeper), France national (#1 / Goalkeeper)

Children: Anna Rose Lloris

 

Lyon to Tottenham on the final day of the summer 2012.

 

7 clean sheets so far this season, averaging  almost 3 vital saves per match

 

Probably the best goalkeeper in Europe and we've got him ha ha, so goalkeeping mitts off him...................

 

His second season with Spurs, the thing I like most about him is his sweeper / goalkeeper approach to keeping goal. 

Any  football coaching manual will teach goalkeepers to narrow the angle, by advancing  forward from the goal line so making the goal look smaller for the shooter. 

Lloris takes this one stage further and reads the game so well, anticipating a break through the defensive 

back 4 line and smothering the ball and the problem. 

 

In fact the defence is so used to playing the high line to catch  the opposition off side, that when there is a 

break through like Remy of Newcastle, they expect Lloris to rush out and dive on top of the ball, except on 

that day Brad Friedel was in goal !!!!!!! Result 1-0 Newcastle. Lloris of course was "medically" inured 

after the week before when he received a blow on the head at Everton . Lloris is such a hard nut the 

Everton forward went off with a wonky knee after kneeing Lloris in the head, whereas Lloris opted to stay 

on and still made another brilliant save in the closing minutes.

 

Talking of Newcastle, ok Lloris has not had to make the number of saves Krul made that day, or Marshall 

of Cardiff before him. However Lloris does save Spurs time and time again. He has kept a remarkable 

number of clean sheets, and is rarely beaten numerous times apart from at home to West Ham and at 

Man City when his defence and defensive midfield, badly let him down and left him exposed. True his kick outs are sometimes weak, but that's what happens when Spurs go backwards straight from their kickoff to put him under self inflicted immediate pressure.Indeed how on earth you can justify such a strategyis beyond me......... perhaps they needed Steve Martin and John Candy shouting from the stands:  "you're going the wrong way " !! 

Any football coaching manual will also tell you that the back pass is a last resort, the ball should be kept away from the danger zone in front of goal, in other words "get rid of the bloody ball" !!!! Kyle Walker's back pass at Anfield last season comes to mind, which cost us 3 points and a top 4 position, and maybe could have stopped a Bale out, funny old game !!!!

 

Still that is history now, as long as history does not repeat itself aided and abetted by sloppy defensive errors.

 

Any great team needs a great goalkeeper. Pat Jennings, Ray Clemence, Bill Brown, all great and green jersey 

keepers. Lloris is more colourful, and certainly would not get run over on a motorway at night dressed as he

does, or maybe its to dazzle the opposition. 

Either way he has all the attributes: agility, anticipation,  athleticism, fast reactions, lightning reflexes, safe non teflon hands, courage, command.of his penalty area, brilliant at one on one situations, nil desperandum, dynamic, determined

 

He wears the cockerel for club and country, Lloris is a true to dare is to do player.