One of the more underestimated aspects of putting a quadruple bid together is the sheer amount of planning and decision making which goes into selecting a starting XI and substitutes bench for so many matches. Forty-one different players have appeared in a match day squad for Liverpool in 2021/22 and that single number barely scratches the surface of the complexity involved in getting the strongest possible side onto the pitch time and again.
Jurgen Klopp has been deprived of 26 different members of his squad for one reason or another at times this season, with the men involved collectively absent for 216 matches. While the games missed total won’t match the unbelievable tally of 340 in 2020/21, the Reds were ‘only’ without 23 players throughout that campaign. The injuries may have been more severe, but the disruption has arguably been worse this time around.
One positive from the mayhem this season is that Klopp’s most in-form forwards have remained almost constantly available. Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah each missed six Liverpool matches while at the Africa Cup of Nations but have thankfully avoided injury, while January signing Luis Diaz has been in every match day squad since completing his move from Porto. Their durability hasn’t just been remarkable by the standards of their club either.
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Following the Reds’ 3-2 win at Villarreal, Nick Harris ( @sportingintel on Twitter ) shared a remarkable statistic: “LFC's Luis Díaz has played more matches in 2021-22 for club(s) and country (64) than any other professional in world football. Of the 5 players on 60+ games for club & country in the world, Mo Salah & Sadio Mané are both on 60, with a possible 6 more to come.”
It’s clearly impossible to play regularly for a club that is chasing a quadruple of trophies without making a lot of appearances, but their international exertions account for roughly a quarter of their totals. All three have played at least 14 times for their countries in 2021/22, which is a remarkable number considering (as an example) England have played nine matches this season.
After they performed so well to salvage the second half of Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final second leg against Villarreal, there’s every chance the trio of Diaz, Mane and Salah will start the final in Paris on May 28. Assuming they do, the Reds will field a front line who have played over 200 games between them in this campaign, which seems scarcely believable.
They are pushing limits which have rarely been seen before. Liverpool will play 63 matches this season, just as they did in both 2015/16 and (far more successfully) 2000/01. In the more recent example, Nathaniel Clyne and Adam Lallana featured most heavily for the Reds and England, by both accumulating 60 appearances. Fifteen years earlier, Sami Hyypia played 65 matches for club and country while Emile Heskey clocked up 63, so roughly the same as the current day attackers have already got under their belts.
They won’t be the only Liverpool players with over 60 games by the end of the season either. Jordan Henderson can’t match the Reds’ forwards for minutes played but he has appeared in 59 games in all competitions this term, the joint-sixth most of any male player on Earth.
Perhaps more impressive is Virgil van Dijk’s standing as the player with the ninth most minutes in world football, the fifth highest among outfielders. To have been so heavily involved after missing almost all of 2021/22 thanks to a serious injury should not be undervalued and will not have been easy.
At this point, rival fans will begin to mutter dark conspiracy theories about how Liverpool’s players are able to perform at such a high level in so many matches. There must also be a concern that playing so much football will catch up with the Reds’ squad at the most vital point of the campaign. Klopp couldn’t have managed the demands upon his players any better though, and it has been a superhuman effort by his men to maintain the longest running quadruple bid in English football history.
