Jurgen Klopp has described the rest Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah enjoyed over the international break as “perfect,” as they head into an even busier period.
Neither Senegal or Egypt had fixtures scheduled for the September interval, which provided two of Liverpool’s key players an opportunity to relax.
Mane and Salah were both at the Africa Cup of Nations over the summer and returned late for pre-season as a result, with the No. 10 missing the Community Shield as he was still on holiday.
Five games into the season, they were finally given the chance to catch up, with a week away from Melwood allowing them to return “re-energised,” as Salah wrote on Instagram on Monday.
Klopp welcomed the situation, too, as he likely prepares to rotate some of his other players ahead of a long, busy spell that starts with seven games in just 21 days.
“It was perfect for the boys who didn’t have to go, that’s how it is,” he told reporters on Friday.
“It’s always a challenge, this little fight.
“I’m really happy for the boys being named for their national team—it’s really nice, it’s a big honour and all that stuff.
“But I’ve said it 500 times, if you see the players who didn’t have to go this time, for different reasons, it’s just different.
“In a very intense period, to have these five or six days off [is useful]—they trained, they always train, but they don’t have to be here.
“Usually we only have three players here, that makes no sense. This time it would have been five.
“We could have trained, but that still makes no sense: Sadio and Mo still don’t have the time off they needed.
“For the others it’s really tough, when we speak about the international ‘break’ they have another week with two games, which is just not easy.
“But we cannot change that, so we don’t think too much about it.
“The more often we could do something like this the better it would be for the boys, because they are refreshed, that’s how it is, and hopefully we can use that.”
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