It was just under two weeks ago that a portion of Liverpool’s first-team squad reconvened in Kirkby for the opening day of pre-season under new head coach Arne Slot.
The numbers have been supplemented since then by the returns of some players who were away on international duty last month, including Mo Salah, Wataru Endo, Dominik Szoboszlai and Andy Robertson.
However, there are 11 members of the Dutchman’s squad who’ve yet to return to Merseyside, having been involved in the latter stages of either Euro 2024 or the Copa America.
In an article for The Athletic, James Pearce has hinted at when those players could make a first appearance at the AXA Training Centre since Slot replaced Jurgen Klopp earlier ths summer.
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Diogo Jota (Portugal) and Alisson Becker (Brazil) both suffered penalty shootout heartache in the last eight of their nations’ respective tournaments on the first weekend of this month.
Based on the standard three-week break that players are given after being involved in such major competitions, the duo would be scheduled to return on 28 July, when Liverpool will be in Philadelphia having just played the first of three friendlies in the USA.
While theoretically they could be involved for most of the pre-season programme, LFC staff may deduce that the pair would be better served by returning to Kirkby for fitness work rather than flying across the Atlantic and back.
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Four Liverpool players were eliminated at the semi-final stage of Euro 2024, with Ibrahima Konate’s France joined in the departures lounge 24 hours later by the Dutch trio of Virgil van Dijk, Cody Gakpo and Ryan Gravenberch.
Applying the three-week rule, they could team up with the Reds at the end of this month or the start of August, although we’d have only one more USA friendly remaining at that stage, and it mightn’t make much sense to burden them with such extensive travel for a solitary non-competitive fixture.
In all likelihood, that quartet will build up their fitness on Merseyside in the days leading up to the Anfield friendly against Sevilla on 11 August.
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Liverpool had two men involved in the England squad which finished as Euro 2024 runners-up (Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joe Gomez) and three in either the final (Alexis Mac Allister, Luis Diaz) or third place play-off (Darwin Nunez) at the Copa America.
Those fixtures were held last weekend, so with the quintet set to be given three weeks off, they’ll return to Kirkby around 4 August, just as Slot’s squad are flying back from the U.S.
It’d given them essentially a full week of fitness training before the Sevilla friendly, although that’d still leave less than a fortnight with the new head coach before the start of the season proper against Ipswich on 17 August.
There’s a possibility that Gomez, Gravenberch and Konate – each of whom travelled to Euro 2024 but didn’t see any game-time at the finals – could return earlier than projected above, although that decision will be left to the individual players.
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