Pepe Reina spent eight years between the posts at Anfield, and for a generation of Liverpool supporters, he remains one of the most popular goalkeepers to have worn the red shirt.
Signed from Villarreal in July 2005, Reina made his competitive Liverpool debut that August in the UEFA Super Cup against CSKA Moscow, a match Liverpool won 3-1 after extra time in Monaco.
He went on to reach the Champions League final with Liverpool in 2007, matching a feat his father, Miguel, had achieved in 1974, though Liverpool lost to Milan in Athens.
On 3 December 2005, Reina kept his sixth consecutive clean sheet against Wigan Athletic in the Premier League, breaking the Liverpool club record for successive clean sheets.
That kind of form, allied to his composed distribution and vocal presence, made him a fixture of the Rafael Benitez era and a firm favourite with the Kop.
Across 394 appearances for the club between 2005 and 2013, Reina won the FA Cup in 2006, the UEFA Super Cup in 2005 and the League Cup in 2012, before a loan to Napoli in 2013 brought his permanent Liverpool career to a close.
Many supporters still regard those years as among the finest goalkeeping spells the club has produced in the Premier League era.
Pepe Reina is now set to return to Anfield’s doorstep, though not as a player.
The Spaniard, who retired from playing in May 2025 after a final season with Como in Serie A, has since taken charge of Villarreal’s under-19 side.
Villarreal’s academy side travel to Liverpool’s Kirkby Academy for a UEFA Youth League league-phase fixture on Tuesday, 20 October, with kick-off at 3pm, meaning Reina will walk back into a Liverpool training ground for the first time since his playing days, this time from the opposite dugout.
Reina’s footballing journey began at Barcelona’s La Masia academy before he joined Villarreal in 2002, then moved to Liverpool three years later.
In his first season in charge of Villarreal’s academy side, Reina’s team won five of their six league-phase matches in last season’s UEFA Youth League, finishing fifth overall, an impressive return in a competition that pits Villarreal’s youngsters against some of Europe’s leading academies.
Villarreal have since confirmed Reina’s contract has been renewed for a further season alongside fellow academy coaches David Albelda and David Cifuentes, rewarding what the club called excellent developmental and competitive work carried out last season.
The fixture forms part of a wider set of meetings between the two clubs this term. Liverpool’s U19s are facing the same six opponents in the Youth League that the senior side meet in this season’s Champions League, with the Villarreal match following Liverpool’s opening group game against Atletico Madrid at Kirkby and a trip to LASK in Austria.
Reina’s connection to Villarreal runs deeper than his own career. His sons, Thiago and Luca, have played for Villarreal’s youth teams while also working as ball boys for their father during his second spell as a player at the club.
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