With seven games to play in the Premier League season and the Champions League quarter finals on the horizon, the March international break marks the final time club football gets put on hold this season. For a Liverpool side in the thick of the fight to re-qualify for Europe’s premier cup competition, the primary concern is whether they get all their players back fit.
One player who is now certain not to be putting more miles in the legs over the next ten days due to international commitments, though,
is Federico Chiesa. The 28-year-old Italian international has continued to struggle to find fitness in his second season at the club, and Italy manager Gennaro Gattuso allowed him to return to Liverpool shortly after he arrived at the team camp.
“Not every player is the same,” Gattuso noted when asked by the press in Italy today as he prepares his side to face Northern Ireland in the World Cup qualifier playoffs. “Footballers’ minds aren’t all alike. When I hear he has problems, that he’s hesitant, I have to make a decision. We decided together because he didn’t feel up to it, he went back home, and I accepted it.
“I can try to convince him for a while but I always think that in life, beyond a match, the relationships matter. So I don’t have great medical expertise but if someone isn’t feeling well, I feel that you shouldn’t insist. If I insist and he stays and ends up damaging his knee how is the player supposed to look at me? So when someone feels they’re not 100%, it’s right they go home.”
There has been little beyond vague general fitness concerns to explain Chiesa’s struggles with fitness this season, and it’s not clear if Gattuso’s reference to knees is specifically about Chiesa or a more general comment on player fitness and injury concerns. Liverpool will return to action on Saturday, April 4th when they take on Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter finals.
