‘Andy Gray criticism? I actually felt sorry for him’ – Liverpool throw-in coach Gronnemark

When it emerged a year ago that Liverpool had employed the world’s first throw-ins coach, Thomas Gronnemark was the butt of the jokes. They aren’t laughing anymore.

The 43-year-old Dane recently signed his third contract with the European champions who have secured his services until the end of the 2019-20 season. His impact at Liverpool has been such that Jurgen Klopp now regards him as a key member of his backroom staff.

Gronnemark, who spent the opening week of the international break on Merseyside coaching the club’s Academy players and staff, is a man in demand. He divides his time between five different European clubs, including Liverpool, Danish outfit FC Midtjylland and Gent from Belgium.

“I can’t tell you the names of the other two as they asked for it to remain confidential,” Gronnemark smiles during an engaging hour in his company.

“I know it’s crazy, but they don’t want it out there. There is a secret Belgian club and the other one is a big club, but not from England.

“It’s like being a baker. You can’t just sell bread to people with blue shoes!

“I’ve had four other Premier League clubs approach my agent, but I really don’t want to coach a direct rival to Liverpool. It was my choice to say no.”

That decision stems from Gronnemark’s respect for Klopp and his debt of gratitude to the Liverpool manager.

He had previously enjoyed success in his homeland with Viborg FF and FC Midtjylland, who tapped into Gronnemark’s remarkable ability to teach their players the art of a long throw. He still holds the world record for the longest throw-in of 51.33m, which he set back in 2010.

However, no coach had fully embraced his methods before Klopp brought him on board in the summer of 2018.

“There are three types of throw-ins — long, fast and clever,” Gronnemark explained. “Being the only throw-in coach in the world, you can name them what you like!

“Before working for Liverpool, it was frustrating for me. I had all this knowledge about how to keep possession from throw-ins and create chances, but people didn’t really want to listen. They only wanted the long throw-ins.

“The first club that really took it all on board was Liverpool. That was the big breakthrough for me. This is the first club where I’ve been able to use all my knowledge. The craziest thing is that I’ve been given much more influence at Liverpool FC than at all the other clubs I worked at before. That says a lot about the mentality and the culture at Liverpool.

“And do you know what’s scary? Three months after I started working for Liverpool I noticed that the first letters of those different types of throw-ins spell L.F.C. The chances of having those three letters being together like that is about one in 22,000.

“Whether it was my subconscious, I don’t know. Growing up, I always liked Liverpool. I brought my son Daniel to a game at Anfield in 2012 and it was my dream to coach here.”

Gronnemark’s backstory is fascinating. He grew up in Horsens in the east of Denmark and was a promising striker at under-18s level, coming up against the likes of Thomas Gravesen, who went on to play for Everton, Real Madrid and Celtic.

Aside from being able to throw the ball long distances, he was blessed with great pace so having failed to make the grade as a professional he turned his attention to athletics.

Gronnemark went on to represent his country as he competed in the 100m, 200m and 400m. He ran a best of 10.61 seconds in the 100m and 21.42 seconds in the 200m. By 2002, he had moved west to the town of Skive. Training on his own was a lonely pursuit so he decided to embrace a new challenge and joined the Denmark bobsleigh team.

“It was ideal because I could use my strength and my speed,” he said.

“We travelled all over Europe and North America, too. It was fantastic. Our best placement was about 15th and the international standard was that the top 30 would go to the Winter Olympics in 2006. But the Danish (Athletics) Federation only wanted athletes going who had a realistic chance of winning a medal so they said we had to have two top-nine placements, which was totally crazy, so we missed out.”

Watching top-level football matches, Gronnemark believed that the importance of throw-ins was massively underestimated by players and coaches alike and vowed to do something about it.

“Back in 2004, I went down to my local library and tried to find a book about throw-ins but there weren’t any,” he said. “I looked on the internet, nothing. So I decided that I would make my own throw-ins course and spent six months putting it all together.

“I didn’t really know if it would work but I thought it would be super cool to work with a team so I contacted a local Super League team called Viborg FF. The coach Ove Christensen welcomed me and they scored a lot of goals from throw-ins that season — having the best placing in the club’s history.

“Then I went to FC Midtjylland. In the last four seasons they have scored about 35 goals from long throws and have been Danish champions two times in the past four years.”

Initially, Gronnemark juggled coaching long throws with a full-time job working with youngsters having studied psychology. But the more time he spent analysing footage of matches, the more convinced he became about the array of opportunities throw-ins presented to teams.

“I started measuring how many balls teams lost or gained from throw-ins,” he said. “I separated it into throw-ins without any pressure and throw-ins under pressure where players are marked.

“I found that most teams kept possession in under 50 percent of the occasions where they had a throw-in under pressure. That’s a totally low number. If you had that same possession percentage with your feet, you’d be playing Sunday League football!

“I started producing exercise drills on how to keep the ball and how to create space. When to throw fast, when not to throw fast and when to show patience instead. There was no throw-in education, so I had to do it all myself. I took things from my experiences in athletics and bobsleigh. I also took inspiration from basketball in terms of creating space.

“Mathematics is important too — calculating angles and throw-in areas. If you want to keep possession from a throw-in, the relations you have with the guys around you are key. You have to develop that and talk about it.”

Gronnemark received a life-changing phone call from Klopp in early July last year.

The Liverpool boss had read a story in German newspaper Bild about how Borussia Monchengladbach’s new signing Andreas Poulsen had improved his long throw from 25m to 37.9m from working with Gronnemark at FC Midtjylland.

“I was in the car with my family on our way to visit a chocolate shop so I had the volume on my phone turned down,” he recalled. “After I parked up I looked at my phone and saw I had missed a call from a +44 number. I listened to the voicemail and it was Jurgen Klopp. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to call him straight back but he didn’t answer.

“Afterwards I thought I best go home to take perhaps the most important call of my life in quiet surroundings. I was driving back, with my wife beside me and the kids in the back, when suddenly the phone rang. My wife took it and said: ‘It’s Jurgen.’

“I drove straight into a grass field and answered it. He said to me: ‘Even though we had a good season last season with fourth place in the Premier League and getting to the final of the Champions League, our throw-ins were really bad. We were losing the ball all the time. We tried to do something about it but it didn’t work.’

“He invited me to Melwood in the middle of July. It was supposed to be just a meeting with a view to making an agreement later if he was interested. But he was so taken by it that he said: ‘Okay, I want you to coach the players tomorrow.’

“I was working with 21 players — all the ones that weren’t injured and weren’t on vacation after the World Cup.”

A few days later RB Leipzig boss Ralf Rangnick also got in touch having read the same article as Klopp and Gronnemark went on to have a month-long spell with the Bundesliga club too.

It was late August before news of Gronnemark’s employment at Liverpool became public knowledge.

“The club kept it quiet and I didn’t say anything to anyone. It was only my wife and my kids who knew, not even my mother and brother knew until it was picked up by the newspapers,” he said. “I knew at some stage it would come out and a few people would make fun of it, but it was more important to me to make a good impression with the club.”

TV pundit Andy Gray was among those to ridicule Gronnemark’s appointment.

Speaking on beIN Sports, the former Everton striker said: “I’m sorry, a throw-in coach? Here’s the ball, pick it up with both hands, take it behind your head and throw it with both feet on the ground. I’ve got a new one for you, I want to be the first kick-off coach.”

Former England goalkeeper Paul Robinson, who was on the panel alongside Gray, was equally dismissive.

“It didn’t bother me, I actually felt a little bit sorry for Andy Gray,” Gronnemark said. “If a guy looks at something new and doesn’t understand it, you have two choices. Either laugh at it or try to find out more about it. I just wish he’d been a bit more curious and asked why would a world-class coach like Jurgen Klopp invite him? It would have made a good feature on their show.

“Instead it was a bit like they were talking in the pub after drinking 10 pints. I think it was unprofessional. Some people hoped I’d be angry but I wasn’t. The internet answered for me with the reaction he got.

“I can laugh at the fact I’m a throw-ins coach. It’s a funny job, I know that.”

From the start, Gronnemark found the Liverpool players much more receptive. He was welcomed into Melwood with open arms.

“It was very important for me to give them motivation – the ‘why’ behind the coaching,” he revealed. “I explained how there are approximately 40 to 60 throw-ins in each match. In a game against Everton last season there were 63 — that’s a lot of situations. If you keep the ball, you can score a goal. If you lose the ball, you are often caught off balance and it’s dangerous.

“If you keep the ball when under pressure from a throw-in then you get more control and that was one of the big differences last season. It’s not all about the throw-ins, but it’s part of it.”

Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold have both worked hard on their technique with Gronnemark, who usually spends one week per month on Merseyside. The full-backs’ long throws are now decent counterattacking weapons. Joe Gomez has also mastered the art – creating a goal for Jesse Lingard when England faced Croatia in the Nations League last November.

For the most part, Liverpool take the fast or the clever option. Ball boys at Anfield are instructed to get the ball back quickly when it goes out of play.

If you can’t catch an opponent napping then the clever throw-in requires intelligent movement to create space for team-mates. Mo Salah scored goals both home and away against Bournemouth last season as chances were fashioned from throw-ins. Sadio Mane’s opener against Manchester United at Anfield last December came from a similar route.

Both Liverpool goals in last month’s win at Southampton originated from throw-ins. The first was a well worked offensive move involving Robertson, James Milner and Georginio Wijnaldum before Mane curled into the far corner.

The second came from putting pressure on an opponent’s throw-in as Saints defender Jan Bednarek had his pocket picked by Mane, and Roberto Firmino slammed home to wrap up the points. Of course, Gronnemark is careful not to go into specifics on his input on such goals, for fear of alerting Liverpool’s rivals.

“My work involves everything you can imagine, both when we have a throw-in and when our opponents have one,” said Gronnemark, who is a popular motivational speaker in Denmark and has written a bestselling book in his homeland called Lazy Energy.

“It’s about technique but also body language, relations between players, precision, the mentality of the thrower. Sometimes it’s really good to throw it fast, sometimes it’s really bad. Sometimes you need the patience to wait for the space to be created by the runs we work on.

“It’s not a coincidence that we scored those two goals at Southampton and it’s satisfying to see. I’m not saying we only scored those two goals because of having a throw-in coach but it’s like a big puzzle and throw-ins are part of that. Right now, Liverpool’s puzzle is almost perfect but you can always improve.

“It’s difficult to measure exactly how many goals have come from throw-ins as sometimes we’ve scored 20 seconds later. It’s about seven or eight but for me it’s just as satisfying to see the movements and see us keeping possession.

“When I see the players learn and develop doing things that we’ve worked on either on the training field or during the video analysis I am totally proud. Last season we had between 70 percent and 100 percent in each of our games in terms of keeping possession from throw-ins under pressure. There’s been a big difference. In our first game this season against Norwich we had 83.3 percent.

“When we played Bayern Munich in the Champions League last season, they had 28 percent in terms of throw-ins under pressure. If Bayern couldn’t throw it fast then they had no real strategy and just threw it down the line. That’s called a 50-50 duel but it should be named 20-80 really as more often than not it’s the defence who win it.”

During last month’s pre-season training camp in Evian, Klopp invited German big-wave surfer Sebastian Steudtner – a man who surfed a wave off Nazare in Portugal more than 35-metres high – to speak to the players about managing stress, dealing with panic and breathing techniques. It was another example of Klopp’s pursuit of marginal gains in order to give his side the edge in the race for more glory on the back of June’s Champions League final triumph.

Gronnemark believes the German’s openness to new ideas is one of his greatest strengths.

“Jurgen is an innovator,” he added. “He’s a leader who says he doesn’t know everything and is willing to listen to people if they have knowledge to take the club forward. If you have a leader who wants total control and thinks he knows best about everything then that will affect the employees.

“Even though you’re one of the best clubs in the world, it doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing as you did yesterday. When you meet Jurgen you feel like you are talking with a good friend. He listens a lot.

“To let a guy into the club who was pretty much unknown in England and say to him ‘we want all your knowledge to put it into the training programme’, that shows a lot of trust and fantastic leadership. He’s very good at getting the best out of people. It’s much more egocentric at other clubs. At Liverpool, there’s a satisfaction among the staff and the players. They all feel part of something special.

“Sometimes I’ll stop and look at the players in front of me and think: ‘Oh, this is crazy.’ I’m working at a gigantic club who won the Champions League. Initially, I had a contract for the first half of last season then it was extended for the second half and now I have one for the full season.

“I don’t think many people are laughing now. I think most people in football look at it and say: ‘Okay, there must be something in it.'”

(Photo: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images)