Player fatigue concerns hang over Liverpool-Madrid CL final
PARIS — For a player who doesn’t consider himself to be a striker, Mohamed Salah is the envy of many forwards with his scoring record for Liverpool.
“I don’t play No. 9, I play on the wing,” Salah said. “It’s completely different when you play as a winger.”
Yet the Egyptian enters the Champions League final Saturday with 31 goals in 50 games for this season and as the leading forward in English football.
An impressive goal return, but one eclipsed by the true No. 9 that Real Madrid will be turning to for goals in the Stade de France. Karim Benzema’s haul stands at 44 goals, achieved in only 45 club games.
Maybe less can be more. The showpiece climax to the European club season could well be determined by who is less fatigued after a two-year period of coronavirus-impacted schedules with few significant breaks.
Such is the concern about the workload on players that, as the teams flew into Paris, members of the world players’ union were meeting in the French capital on Thursday to discuss burnout of the biggest stars.
“It’s obviously the time of the year when the players are really focused on winning,” FIFPRO general secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann said. “I’m sure they are going to get all their energy to play a good match on Saturday but they are going to pay for it eventually.
It’s really concerning for us in the moment, the risk of injury now, but also in the long term.”
Benzema, who at 34 is five years older than Salah, has only taken to the field 52 times since August for Madrid and France.
Adding on their African Cup of Nations trips in January, Salah and Senegal forward Sadio Mane are set to play their 70th games of the season.
Liverpool has played every game possible this season and every one has had something at stake. The Premier League went down to the wire — with Manchester City winning the title by one point Sunday — and Liverpool won the FA Cup the previous
weekend and the League Cup in February.
Madrid had the luxury of winning the Spanish league with four games to spare a month ago. Carlo Ancelotti’s hopes of a domestic cup ended in a quarterfinal loss in the Copa del Rey in February.
“I don’t think we’ll struggle. We have had a full week’s preparation,” Liverpool defender Andy Robertson said. “They have had a bit more relaxed preparation. They wrapped up the league … and have been able to relax and not play as many games at the highest tempo. We wanted to fight for everything and knew what it would do to our bodies.”
Jurgen Klopp is still chasing a treble with Liverpool. Publicly, at least, Ancelotti isn’t talking about trying to exploit any tiredness in the Liverpool squad.