Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp gave an injury update on four of The Reds’ defenders who are recovering from serious injuries.
The four players in question were Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez, Joël Matip, and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Van Dijk and Gomez have been injured since October and November respectively. Matip has been out since January while Alexander-Arnold was injured in an England friendly shortly before the Euros.
Speaking to Liverpoolfc.com, Klopp offered the following insight into each of their current situations, revealing that Matip and Alexander-Arnold are closest to full fitness:
“… all four look really good, I have to say. Look really good.
“Now we are in constant talks with the medical department, the fitness department, the rehab department about what is right for them today: do they have to do maybe a little bit more than the rest of the group, do they have to do a little bit less?
“So, especially Virg and Joe will not have double sessions now for the first few days with the team; they have a second session of the day but it’s with Andreas Schlumberger, with the rehab department, physiotherapy, these kinds of things. That’s for these two. [They] look really good. I don’t know exactly when we can make the next steps but it will happen in the next four weeks, for sure – we will get a big step forward.
“Joël looks good, absolutely, he is the closest probably to normal training and then we will see when we get him started for playing.
“Trent was a serious enough injury but now not a major one, I would say. He is close but in the moment, probably the next five or six days he has a special programme: from time to time with the team, probably from time to time by himself. But then in five or six or seven days, he should be in normal team training.”
About the training camp in Austria and when the rest of Liverpool’s international players will be back, Klopp said:
“[It’s] a big group here – a very youthful group but a lot of experienced players here as well. Everything we need is here.
“Of course, the guys from the Euros and the Copa [America] are not here yet, they have a well-deserved holiday still. But we still try to use the time as good as we can to bring the young guns a little bit closer to the first team, and to bring all the other guys in the best possible shape as quick as possible. It will take time, we had a long break, which was absolutely needed.
“We didn’t start now immediately with the highest intensity, of course. We try to get in step by step, having the first game in a few days and these kinds of things. So, I’m really thrilled being back, to be honest.
“It was a really good holiday and since two or three weeks I could have been back already, mindset-wise. But it was not bad to have them as well. And now we are here full of energy – let’s get started.”
Liverpool will partake in two ‘mini’ friendlies next week – Tuesday, July 20th – against FC Wacker Innsbruck and VfB Stuttgart. It will be interesting to see how Liverpool will approach both games with two separate lineups.
What a backdrop ⛰️😍 pic.twitter.com/pb1cxJL4vI
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) July 13, 2021
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