Liverpool will not be playing a controversial post-season friendly in Australia, claim sources on Merseyside, despite reports of a date being lined up for May.
Following Liverpool’s exit from the Champions League, newspaper the Australian claimed that a post-season friendly in Melbourne was set to be agreed.
According to their report this would have seen Arne Slot‘s side fly out soon after their planned title parade in the week following the final game of the season against Crystal Palace.
But claims Liverpool will play the A-League All-Stars on the same weekend as the Champions League final have been dismissed.
The Mail‘s Lewis Steele insists “this is just the rumour mill” and no post-season friendly is being negotiated.
Sources close to the club maintain that there are “no plans to fly to the other side of the world just hours after the season finishes.”
While the details in Steele’s report are a bit confused – with the friendly set to have been pencilled in for the end of the week, rather than straight after the Palace game – it seems those hoping to see Liverpool in Melbourne will be disappointed.
However that should come as a relief to those concerned by the addition of another fixture after a long campaign has come to a close.
By full-time at Anfield on May 25, Liverpool will have played 56 games across four competitions, with as many as seven of Slot’s players having clocked the equivalent of 40 full games’ worth of minutes.
Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah could have played closer to 50.
As Newcastle and Tottenham found in their own trips to Australia soon after the end of last season, while it may be a lucrative venture it is not popular among the wider support.
With players and managers frequently outlining the demands of an already expanded fixture list, clubs organising extra friendlies for commercial game only undermines that.
Liverpool did play a post-season friendly in Australia as recently as 2017, when Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Steve McManaman took to the pitch alongside Jurgen Klopp‘s squad for a 3-0 win over Sydney FC.
Explaining the player’s reaction to having to travel to the other side of the world directly after their campaign ended, Klopp said at the time: “Because I’m the boss they were not too critical, but I could see in their eyes they would have done different things.”
