Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp said the Premier League’s top six could be left without 11 fit players unless changes are made to protect the welfare of stretched squads.
Already depleted by an injury crisis, the Reds are to play three games in six-and-a-half days this week.
Klopp’s men saw off Leicester City 3-0 in Sunday’s late Premier League match and today are to welcome Atalanta BC to Anfield in the UEFA Champions League, before traveling to Brighton & Hove Albion for Saturday’s fixture.
Photo: AFP
“If we keep playing Wednesday night and Saturday 12.30, I am not sure we finish the season with 11 players, all the top six or seven,” Klopp told Sky Sports, the largest domestic rights holder of Premier League matches.
Under the terms of a ￡4.5 billion (US$6 billion) deal for three seasons, Sky have the first pick from each round of games.
Klopp said that broadcasters should adapt to the circumstances of a season like no other, with matches crammed into the calendar to make up for time lost from a three-month hiatus.
“Everybody tells me it is difficult, but it is difficult for the players. That’s what is difficult. The rest is just a decision on a desk in an office,” Klopp said. “If someone tells me again about contracts, I go really nuts because the contracts were not made for a COVID-19 season.”
“We all have to adapt,” Klopp added. “You stand here with a mask, would you have thought a year ago you would go somewhere with a mask and we cannot be close? That’s the situation. Everything changed — but the contract with the broadcasters is still: ‘We said this, so we keep this.’”
Klopp said that he even mulled sending a youth team to Brighton to prevent more injuries.
Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jordan Henderson, Thiago Alcantara, Xherdan Shaqiri and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain missed the win over Leicester, while Mohamed Salah was absent after testing positive for COVID-19.
“We will go there shaking,” Klopp said, adding that he had even thought of “sending” the points to Brighton.
The German said that his complaints were not motivated by self-interest.
“It was never about us when I spoke about it, it’s about all the players. It’s about the England players, all the players who play the European championship in the summer,” he added.
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