Four injured Liverpool players — Conor Bradley, Hugo Ekitike, Stefan Bajcetic, and Wataru Endo — have travelled with the squad to the United States, but don't read too much into it. They're not close to playing. The club simply decided rehabbing around teammates beats grinding through sessions alone at an empty AXA Training Centre for a fortnight.
Andoni Iraola is already taking a different approach to pre-season than his predecessors. There's no open training session on the schedule this time around, meaning the new head coach gets to do his work without a media audience for once. Given Liverpool trained at Chicago Fire's Endeavour Health Performance Centre with temperatures soaring in Illinois, he'll need that privacy — the sessions are reportedly gruelling.
When do the World Cup players arrive?
Iraola's bigger selection headache is timing. Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak, Virgil van Dijk, Ryan Gravenberch, and Cody Gakpo all exited the World Cup on June 29 or 30. Liverpool's standard policy gives tournament players three weeks off, which means the earliest any of them could join up is mid-tour — potentially for the Wrexham game at Yankee Stadium on July 30 or the Leeds United fixture in Chicago on August 2. Iraola was due to speak to media at 9pm BST Monday and will likely offer some clarity.
None of those five featuring in the opener against Sunderland in Nashville is essentially off the table. That's a significant chunk of Liverpool's projected first-choice XI unavailable for the first week, which matters when you're trying to build shape and understanding under a new manager.
Szoboszlai's new deal — and the captaincy question
The one player who arrived in Chicago with something to prove is Dominik Szoboszlai, who signed a new contract tying him to the club until 2031 last week. Talks started back in October, stalled, then accelerated after positive negotiations with sporting director Richard Hughes. Szoboszlai was one of few Liverpool players whose performances held up last season, and there's internal discussion about handing him a formal leadership role.
His agent, Matyas Esterhazy, is having none of the captain talk though. "A great leader does not ask for leadership," Esterhazy told winwin.com. "Leadership comes to you when you are a leader." He also flatly denied reports the vice captaincy was a condition of the contract: "These are reports from people who know nothing about football and who know nothing about the atmosphere of the dressing room."
That's a fairly pointed rebuttal. Whether Szoboszlai ends up as Van Dijk's deputy or not, his new deal is the kind of commitment Liverpool needed — losing a player of his consistency on a free would have been a genuinely difficult problem to solve in the market.
- Pre-season opener: Liverpool vs Sunderland, GEODIS Park, Nashville
- Second friendly: Liverpool vs Wrexham, Yankee Stadium, July 30
- Tour finale: Liverpool vs Leeds United, Chicago, August 2
- Injured quartet travelling: Bradley, Ekitike, Bajcetic, Endo (all rehabbing)
Liverpool's injury picture means their pre-season odds for early competitive form should be treated with some caution — too many key players are either rehabbing or returning late from international duty. Iraola is essentially building a picture with half the pieces missing for now.
