(Photos by Judit Cartiel/Getty Images and Michael Regan/Getty Images/Getty Images For The Premier League)
Thomas Tuchel has claimed that Liverpool will already have a significant edge on two Premier League rivals in particular when the 2025/26 season kicks off in August.
The Reds will play their first competitive match of the campaign slightly earlier than most teams in the division as they take on Crystal Palace in the Community Shield a week before the top-flight season begins.
However, whereas Arne Slot’s title-winning squad can enjoy a well-earned summer holiday once they’ve completed international duty this week, their counterparts at Manchester City and Chelsea will jet off to USA to prepare for their participation in the newly-expanded Club World Cup.
Tuchel on Liverpool’s ‘huge advantage’ for next season
Speaking ahead of his England team’s friendly against Senegal tonight, Tuchel claimed that Liverpool and Arsenal will already be in a superior starting position to the aforementioned clubs due to not being involved at the new FIFA tournament on the other side of the Atlantic.
The Three Lions boss said (via Evening Standard): “I think it [Club World Cup] will have a huge impact and it will give Liverpool and Arsenal a huge advantage in the next season to not be there.
“I think it will be a very nice experience for the players who are there to play this tournament for the first time, so it is mixed feelings about it.”
Tuchel added: “I think the clubs are concerned and I get that for the Club World Cup and after a long season. I think the players feel it and some of them feel tired and some of them feel the tiredness more after one or two weeks of holiday than they felt it straight after the season, so sometimes it is easier to say in a rhythm.
“There is not one player who says: ‘By the way, I would like to be on the bench and save myself for the Club World Cup’, so they are hungry to play. The games are not the problem; it is just the amount of time that it occupies from the players, and they need a proper rest somewhere in this calendar, which they hardly get.”
Liverpool could very easily have qualified for Club World Cup
Liverpool could very easily have been involved in the FIFA tournament, had they beaten Real Madrid in the Champions League showpiece in 2022, or had the outcomes of the finals either side of that been different.
The Club World Cup only allows for a maximum of two teams per country unless more than that win their continental competitions. Had either Man City beaten Chelsea in 2021 or lost to Inter Milan two years later, the Reds would’ve qualified as one of the highest-ranked clubs in UEFA’s coefficient.
While we still curse the name of Thibaut Courtois for his masterclass at the Stade de France three years ago, at least it came with the silver lining of LFC not having to fly across to America for a Gianni Infantino vanity project which heaps even more of a burden on footballers of whom an excessive amount is already asked.
The first staging of the expanded FIFA tournament was actually meant to have taken place in China in 2021, and we would’ve been involved due to our Champions League triumph in Madrid two years previously, but of course the global pandemic forced the competition to be postponed.
With the Club World Cup final taking place of 13 July, five weeks before the Premier League season starts, we can see why Tuchel believes Liverpool and Arsenal could hold an advantage over the two English clubs competing Stateside this summer.
Ironically it was his Chelsea team winning the Champions League in 2021 which had the knock-on effect of the Reds not partaking in FIFA’s new tournament over the next few weeks.
In hindsight, that appears to have done us a massive favour in allowing Slot’s players to come back to Kirkby in July refreshed and ready to hit the ground running as they seek to retain their top-flight title.
