Klopp welcomes ‘massive lift’ for reunited squad
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp says having the squad back together is a “massive, massive lift” as his team prepares to wrap up a first league title in 30 years.
English football has been on hold since mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic, but ‘Project Restart’ is well under way and the Premier League is set to resume on June 17.
Liverpool have a massive 25-point lead over nearest rivals Manchester City.
Liverpool stepped up preparations by resuming contact training in recent days, with Klopp looking to hit the ground running in the postponed Merseyside derby.
“We don’t have to be match-fit now,” he told Liverpoolfc.com. “We try it with increasing intensity, day by day, but we have to be fit on the 19th or 20th, whichever day they will give us against Everton, I think. That’s the moment when we want to be at 100%.”
Klopp noted the length of the break was unprecedented.
“We never had nine weeks without football training in our lives - since we played football, pretty much,” Klopp said.
The coach of Italian football club Atalanta says he contracted COVID-19 and was concerned for his life in mid-March.
Gian Piero Gasperini tells the Gazzetta dello Sport that he started feeling sick on March 9, a day before Atalanta played at Valencia in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16.
He says that when he returned to Bergamo, which was quickly becoming the epicentre of the pandemic, “I didn’t have a fever, but I felt destroyed and as if I had a 40-degree (Celsius, or 104 Fahrenheit) fever.”
He adds, “Every two minutes an ambulance passed by as there’s a hospital nearby. It seemed like a war. At night, I would think, ‘If go in (the hospital), what will happen to me?’”
Gasperini said he quickly recovered without checking into the hospital and didn’t confirm he had the virus until the entire Atalanta team was tested 10 days ago.