When Thomas Gronnemark joined Liverpool in the summer of 2018 to work as a specialist throw-in coach, the move was not met with universal acclaim. Far from it.
Sceptics could be heard everywhere, vocal in their disbelief, wondering why Liverpool needed to employ someone to work on such a simple aspect of the game. In some circles, Gronnemark was ridiculed before he had even been given a chance to prove himself.
"Here is a lesson. Pick the ball up, take it behind your head, throw it to a teammate and keep both feet on the ground,” joked former Everton striker Andy Gray on beIN SPORTS. Throw-ins were seen as a boring but necessary part of the game. Little thought ever went into them. But Gronnemark was convinced he could make an impact and change the perception of the throw-in.
He had already tested his theory and developed a method at Danish Superliga clubs FC Midtjylland - sister club of Premier League upstarts Brentford - and AC Horsens and he was ready for the step up. Jurgen Klopp was open minded and gave him the perfect platform.
The past five years have seen Liverpool under Klopp go toe-to-toe with Manchester City, break records, win titles – and prove Gronnemark right. His work with Liverpool has come to an end, with the club choosing not to renew his contract for the 2023/24 campaign, but the Dane has no hard feelings.
“Results-wise, to go from winning not much to winning everything you can, it has been fantastic,” he tells Mirror Football. “Throw-in-wise it’s been fantastic, too, because it’s the first club I’ve worked at where I’ve had the opportunity to work on both the long throws and fast throw-ins. The team scored lots of goals on throw-ins.
"It’s been a successful five years, it’s been really great.”
Gronnemark’s success in helping Liverpool improve their throw-ins owes a lot to Klopp, who was happy to devote valuable time to his sessions. Gronnemark gave four or five coaching sessions per season from 2018 to 2020, teaching the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson how to lengthen their throw and the methodology behind when they should and why, while highlighting to others how to maximise opportunities from the dead-ball situation.
“When your manager says in the first training session that throw-ins are the team’s big weakness and you have an expert in to work on it, of course the players, because they’re professional, are happy to work on it,” he explains. “If they weren’t concentrated and happy then they couldn’t have improved so much on the pitch.
“I coach different clubs according to their playing styles and wishes. I did work on long throw-ins with Liverpool, but that was primarily to increase the throwing area so you can throw to more team-mates or use it as a counter-attacking weapon. The longer you can throw it, the more options you have.
“Andy Robertson – he could throw 19 metres at the start when I came to the club, and that was really short and meant that when Liverpool had a throw-in, it was really easy for the opponents to put on pressure because he couldn’t throw far.
"But he improved pretty fast to 27 metres and increased in throwing area to more than 500 metres squared. That was primarily what it was used for at Liverpool.”
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Gronnemark used to hold the world record for the longest throw-in, at 51.33 metres, and is evangelical about them. He believes they are a fundamental part of the game that's wrongly overlooked by the vast majority of those who coach.
“A lot of people have talked about my coaching, or throw-in coaching, as marginal gains,” he says. “For me that’s like the biggest mistake ever. Marginal gains is like what the Sky team did in cycling, shaving legs to pick up a 0.00001 per cent faster.
“There are 40 to 60 throw-ins per match, which uses approximately 20 minutes of the match, so, for me, it’s gigantic gains. That’s the reason why it’s important, because it’s a big part of the game. It’s been underestimated in football.”
He does not have a bad word to say about his critics, either: “It’s important to say that from the start it was only a small percentage who were making rude and crazy comments. It was a very small part – and yeah there were some pundits, but even they can lack knowledge in football and especially throw-ins.
“There were a lot of people who questioned why you would coach throw-ins and asked what it can achieve, but I think that was due to a lack of knowledge around throw-ins – what works, how you can coach them – and they thought it was just long throw-ins, like Stoke.
"For me it was a natural scepticism and it was fine for me, it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
Gronnemark has worked with 25 professional clubs, thanks in a large part to his exposure at Liverpool. During his time with them, those teams have won 18 titles.
He may have left Liverpool, but his work on throw-ins is far from done.
