Jurgen Klopp has hinted at the sobering possibility that one member of his current Liverpool squad might never play under the German again.
The 56-year-old will depart at the end of this season, with the final three months of his reign now underway, and one player might be precluded from having any involvement in that poignant home stretch of the campaign.
Speaking to the media this afternoon ahead of the FA Cup match against Southampton on Wednesday night (via Liverpool Echo), the Reds manager confirmed that ‘there is no timescale’ on when Thiago Alcanatara might return from his ongoing thigh injury.
When asked whether the 32-year-old would play again this term, Klopp conceded: “I don’t know. It’s not that he might be in training in two weeks. I can’t say more about it.”
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It’s a crying shame that Thiago’s time at Liverpool appears to be petering out to an anticlimactic end, considering how gifted a footballer he is.
Having only just returned from more than nine months out injured in the closing minutes of the defeat to Arsenal earlier this month, the 32-year-old broke down again prior to the following match against Burnley, and there’s a strong possibility that we might never see him in a red shirt again.
He turns 33 in April and his contract expires in the summer; and with the midfielder earning an eye-watering £200,000 per week (Capology), the chances of LFC committing to new terms for an ageing player who’s barely featured over the past year seem remote.
We can only hope that Thiago might be able to play even a small role on the pitch for Liverpool before Klopp says his final goodbye in May. It’d be what the Spaniard deserves, considering how brilliant he’d been in his first couple of years at Anfield after his move from Bayern Munich in 2020.