Liverpool may change up to three players from their Champions League roster while waiting for an update on injury of Luis Diaz.
Liverpool may be ready to give a Luis Diaz injury hint before announcing their Champions League team for the second half of the season,
The Colombian hasn’t appeared for them since having to leave the Reds’ loss to Arsenal in early October due to a knee injury. Even though he resumed training in December at Liverpool’s mid-season training camp in Dubai, the winger would later experience surgery after complaining of joint pain.
The 26-year-old was allegedly likely to miss all of February. It will be interesting to see whether such an estimate is correct because the Reds are cautious about when they hope to see Diaz return, especially in light of his prior setback.
Regardless, he will undoubtedly miss Liverpool’s match against Real Madrid in the Champions League round of 16 on February 21 at Anfield. And he is probably still in question for the return leg on March 15 at the Bernabeu.
The injury forced the Reds to withdraw Chamberlain and Keita from their Champions League team for the first half of the season. But both players returned to training before the group stages were over. Therefore, depending on how well Diaz’s recovery is doing behind the scenes, it’s possible that Jurgen Klopp will make a similar choice.
Klopp gives an injury update on Luis Diaz
Klopp said:
“Diogo, Bobby and Virgil, a couple of weeks before they can join the training and then we have to see how quickly it goes from there.
It will take another couple of weeks, I think.
Luis (Diaz) takes longer. He (Arthur Melo) is pretty good. He is running a lot. For him as well, two or three weeks may be until he can join team training. But it looks good, for a while already. After a long injury, he needs a proper build-up. He was not part of team training.”
It’s unclear just how long. However, suppose Diaz is a member of Liverpool’s squad. In that case, we can infer that his recuperation is progressing well enough for him to compete in the Champions League once more this year and that he might be on schedule to play for Madrid.
The clubs are only permitted to name a maximum of three new players in their squads at the mid-season point. The Reds will still need to leave out senior players from their squad from the first half of the season after signing Cody Gakpo from PSV Eindhoven and if they wish to reinstate Oxlade-Chamberlain and Keita.
