He has just about mastered the artwork of offering the final line of defence behind a daily soccer group.
However, on the age of 30, the mundane enterprise of stopping pictures and claiming crosses is not sufficient to stimulate Ben Siegrist. Which is why yesterday the Swiss keeper signed up for a complete new expertise. Find out how to preserve purpose, in accordance with Ange Postecoglou.
Granted, the very concept would possibly scare the life out of lesser males – and at instances final season it did appear as if even Joe Hart was being uncovered to a complete new world of excessive tariff danger taking. However for Siegrist, that is the chance he has waited a complete profession for.
And the previous Dundee United No.1 may hardly wipe the smile off his face after being formally unveiled as the most recent recruit of Postecoglou’s ongoing Celtic rebuild: “In the end, it was all the way down to the supervisor – it was all the way down to his imaginative and prescient,” Siegrist defined as he mirrored on the best resolution of his skilled life.
“I may go to a different group and play one other 100 or 150 video games or I may go someplace I really feel prefer it’s going to enhance me probably the most. That’s what it got here all the way down to, my willingness to enhance – to higher myself – and measure myself day in, time out towards the perfect gamers Scotland has to supply.
“That was the implausible alternative I didn’t need to go up. I had the urge to search for one thing new, one thing that actually pushes me and improves me.
“So when the supervisor did inform me his imaginative and prescient for the membership and the half I’m going to be enjoying, I felt it was the precise spot for me. I wished to be a part of it. I wished to name this house and be a part of this aspect now.
“I had an excellent dialog with the goalie coach Stevie Woods who has a implausible repute and I actually sit up for working with him and studying.”
If season one has taught us something it’s certainly that the primary rule of Angeball is to overlook about virtually all the things you ever discovered about how the sport is performed underneath regular managers. Sure, even when your job is meant to be primarily based round maintaining the ball out of the again of the web. Siegrist has a lot to be taught. And the teachings can’t start rapidly sufficient.
He went on: “It’s probably not dangerous since you don’t simply flip up on a Saturday and it occurs. You practise it daily on the coaching floor. Will it take a while to regulate? In fact. However I don’t have a look at it as being that dangerous – I received’t be enjoying sq. passes within the six-yard field!”
Which does beg an apparent query: Did he not see how Hart performed the position final season?
Siegrist smiled and stated: “Yeah, after all, but when that’s the best way the supervisor needs to play then it’s as much as me to get it nailed down. However, once more, that was his imaginative and prescient – for me to be taught the system and to use it in recreation time.
“It’s a part of my recreation that I in all probability couldn’t present to individuals due to the best way I used to be requested to play at my earlier group. So I sit up for displaying individuals how good I'm at it. It can 100 per cent make me a greater participant. That’s precisely the purpose.
“I need to be taught a distinct aspect of the sport and ‘Angeball’ as you’ve known as it – I’ve performed towards it and it’s fairly annoying when the boys are chasing after it for 90 minutes and the ball is shifting so rapidly. However I’ve seen it, I’ve competed towards it and now I need to be a part of it.”
As a matter of reality, Siegrist appeared to maintain his absolute best kind for these days when it was his accountability to throw a spanner in Postecoglou ’s all-out-attacking recreation plan. And it was on a kind of dizzying afternoons final season that the penny dropped for the primary time, after Liel Abada broke his one-man resistance within the dying seconds of injury-time to bag a vital late winner.
Requested if he relished these earlier encounters he continued: “Yeah, I imply, have you ever seen the stadium? It’s fairly particular. I bear in mind shedding right here within the second-to-last minute and the lights have been occurring, the gang have been going loopy.
“I used to be gutted, I used to be actually gutted, however I appeared up and I believed, ‘That is fairly particular right here.’ So it’s simply thrilling for me to be right here and to be a part of it – to be a part of how the supervisor needs to take the membership ahead.”
At this level, one other apparent query does spring to thoughts. It’s one factor simply getting right here and having fun with the view. However how on earth does he intend to knock Hart out of the best way after the size of the Englishman’s contribution to Postecoglou’s first marketing campaign?
Is that this not a danger in itself?
With a shake of the pinnacle, Siegrist stated: “No, I take pleasure in competitors. It brings the perfect out of everybody. After I had that cellphone name with the supervisor, he instructed me his imaginative and prescient and what’s going to be occurring sooner or later.
“This isn’t only a short-term, see-how-it-goes venture, this can be a long-term factor with the supervisor and the way he needs us to play. The truth that I’m in all probability going to should be taught a distinct fashion of enjoying excites me as a result of I may have simply carried on with my profession and performed one other 200 video games the identical approach as I all the time have.
“However I don’t assume I might have improved as a lot as I'll do by coming right here and making an attempt to be taught the Celtic approach. The largest problem might be fulfilling my very own expectations, you realize? I’m assured sufficient to go in and ensure I can carry my talents into the group however I even have an enormous respect for the group.
"We're the champions, I needed to compete towards them final 12 months, so I’ll get again to you on that one. For now, I’m simply wanting ahead to assembly everybody and attending to know my team-mates, the employees and the followers in the end, and incomes their belief.”