Two international breaks into his Liverpool tenure and Arne Slot has done little to suggest he is part of the domestic managerial brigade who are uncomfortable sitting through the best part of a fortnight away from their key players.
Slot has cut a relaxed figure whenever the prospect of international fixtures has been brought up at his AXA Training Centre press conferences and has appeared, on the surface at least, as someone who is more than accepting of the fact that regular national games are part and parcel of elite-level football.
Quite how his mood will change if one of his key men return with an injury only he will know but there might have privately been some frustration at aired at seeing Harvey Elliott go down with a foot fracture while on England Under-21 duty last month. Generally, though, Liverpool’s head coach looks to be one of the few who is not too anxious at leaving his stars in the care of their national FAs.
On the contrary, in fact, Slot recognised recently that the break can be a good source of minutes for players in his squad who haven’t been able to rack up too many at Anfield.
Darwin Nunez, for example, was someone who Slot wanted to go on international duty with Uruguay because of the fitness that needed building further and a behind-closed-doors game had been in the pipeline as a way of getting the No.9 sharper, prior to the news last week that the striker had been cleared to take part for his country following an appeal of his five-game suspension for his part in crowd trouble at the Copa America.
“I would have preferred him to go because I think it is always good for a player to go to his national team, they like to see their team-mates again,” Slot said.
“He would have probably played two games, at least one but I think both because he is a starter over there and like you guys are telling me constantly, he hasn’t started that much over here. It would have been good for him to get some playing time there.
