Jurgen Klopp has warned about the perils of football’s increasingly crammed calendar and used Sadio Mane’s workload as evidence of the current excess.
Mane was a central figure for Senegal at last year’s World Cup and that meant his campaign for the previous season finished on June 28, 2018. He then had a short break before returning to pre-season training, where his first match was against Manchester City in New Jersey on July 25.
He went onto become an integral figure in a season that culminated in Liverpool winning the Champions League — Mane was the Premier League’s joint top-scorer — before he helped Senegal reach the African Cup of Nations final in Egypt, which they lost to Algeria.
That match was played last Thursday, meaning he played 57 times over 359 days; following on from 54 appearances for club and country in 2017-18. The consequence is that Mane will not return until August 5, meaning he will miss the Community Shield and the first league game against Norwich.
Klopp knows he is not the only manager to be impacted by the constant demands on players and the point he made was in general for all Premier League managers; he fears there will come a point in the future when it all becomes too much and it impacts on the standard that is being produced.
“Ask Sadio how much holiday he has had,” said Klopp. “He’s played pretty much every game for Senegal. He’s played each game for us. Every international break, he is away. Ask him. We sit here and it sounds like I am having a moan or whatever.”
“It is just the situation, in the long-term, is not acceptable. For here (on pre-season) it is not a problem. We have all the boys here, apart from the three up front and Alisson. That’s not the biggest problem for Ali (only having a couple of weeks to prepare) but the other three we will see.”
“They need a holiday. It’s not like after three days you can say to them ‘Hey! Come on! Let’s start running again! They have had a tough summer programme. It’s football. It’s not riding a bike, so you lose a little bit (of rhythm). It will all come back but it will be a tough start.”
“For the other teams as well — Tottenham have had it pretty much like we have. But it is just like it is. In the future, we have to change that! It looks like nobody can imagine a week without football in the year. When did that happen? A game again, a game again.”
The introduction of the Nations League this year added another layer of games and Klopp feels Uefa’s desire to ensure the tournament carried prestige meant players were selected for duty even though they were not physically in the best condition.
“I said about the Nations League — I don’t like it,” Klopp explained. “People looked at me and said ‘huh? — each national coach around the world said ‘No! I love it! It’s brilliant and we go for something!’ So now we have the World Cup, the European Championships and the Nations League.
“So I looked at the games. Four days after the Champions League final, the boys are there. Welcome! The Dutch guys, Shaqiri, the English boys. If they had been friendly games, the boys would not have been there at all. But no.... It’s the Nations League, so they have got to go.”
“There is always an important competition! The next important competition! There are so many things. You cannot change it, so why should I talk about it? We have to make sure all together that there is enough space for the boys to recover and then to go again. There must be breaks.”
