Will the World Club Championships be a help or hindrance?
On Sunday Liverpool will leave for Japan to participate in the FIFA World Club Championships. This comes just before the premiership's busiest period of the year. The Reds will play two games in Japan, the Semi Final against Deportivo Saprissa on December 15th and then hopefully the Final on the 18th. Liverpool will then return to Premiership action against Newcastle United on the 26th December for the first of four games in seven days. Will the disruption caused by the trip be worthwhile?On the positive side the if the Reds are victorious they will be the European and World Club Champions. They will also receive prize money of $ 4.5 million which should help Rafa's January spending spree. It will also be nice for Liverpool to play in front of their Japanese fans following the cancellation of the pre-season tour as Uefa told the holders of their premier competition to start the defence with pre qualification. Previously the European Champions would have traveled to Japan in any case for the one-off game against the South American Champions. The World Club Championships has now replaced this one off game and will be held every year.
Liverpool already have one game in hand in the Premiership. It would have been two had Sunderland not kindly agreed to bring their game forward. They will miss another game whilst participating in Japan. We are already playing catch up in the League and progression in the FA Cup and Champions League will no doubt cause a fixture pile up. With the Super Cup and Champions League qualification Liverpool have already played seven games more than usual. Surely fatigue will be a problem due to the sheer volume of games. Although the squad is stronger than last season Sami & Carra have played virtually every game and could do with a rest and certainly not additional games.
We are currently playing well and are on a superb run. Hopefully the rhythm will not be lost when traveling to the other side of the world. Overall, on the basis that Rafa can strengthen the squad in January to allow some of our heavily employed players some rest, I think the World Club Championships could provide a welcome mid season boost, provided we win the tournament.
Please post your views.
posted by withwolves @ 1:56 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Provided we win it ot should be a great way to earn some cash and sell some shirts in the far east. I'm sure another trophy will help the players get over the long flight and extra couple of games. However if we don't it could be a bit embarrasing and really mess up what is turning out to be an excellent season!
To be honest I reckon that this "trophy" is really only good for potential investment in the club.
In my opinion its also the reason why Cisse and Sinema are not moving in January on loan somewhere. I'm predicting that both will get turfed out at the end of the season along with Le Tal.
We badly, badly need cover in the defence for Sami and Carra. I'm just not confident in Josemi and Djimi. Please god it will happen!! Hopefully we'll get Zenden back quickly too, we're going to need him.
YOU WONT HAVE ANY JAPANESE FANS LEFT AFTER THEY WITNESS YOUR BORING BRAND OF FOOTBALL
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