Forget The Friendly Result, Leeds In Chicago Is About Three Big Answers
Sunday’s send-off friendly against Leeds United in Chicago will not live long in the memory for the football, but it might be one of the more revealing fixtures of the whole pre-season. Ryan Gravenberch, Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz are all in line to finally get proper minutes together, and after a delayed start to the trip for all three, this is effectively Andoni Iraola’s first real chance to see what his most expensively assembled attacking spine looks like in motion.
None of the trio arrived in the United States with the rest of the group. All three reported late after their international commitments ran deep into the summer, and Iraola has been managing their reintegration carefully rather than rushing them straight into fixtures. That caution makes sense on paper, but it also means Liverpool have gone almost the entire trip without seeing their most talked-about attacking options sharing a pitch. Leeds changes that, even if only for a limited spell.
Why the caution has made sense
Our view is that Iraola deserves credit for resisting the temptation to throw his marquee names straight into the deep end. The rest of the group has had a fortnight’s head start on conditioning and collective understanding, and parachuting three players who missed that groundwork straight into matches would have risked injuries and shaky first impressions alike. A managed, gradual introduction before the campaign starts properly is simply sound practice.
That said, patience only buys you so much time, and Sunday is where careful reintegration needs to start turning into genuine assessment ahead of the season proper.
The Jacquet situation nobody is rushing
Away from the headline names, there is a quieter and arguably more delicate story running through this trip involving Jeremy Jacquet. The summer defensive addition has missed both of Liverpool’s American fixtures so far after picking up discomfort in training, and the club’s approach to his recovery tells you plenty about how thin they currently are at senior centre back. With Joe Gomez still out and Virgil van Dijk not yet back in full training, Liverpool are short of specialist options in that area, which makes it tempting to fast-track any fit body back into the group.
To Iraola’s credit, that is not the approach being taken. Jacquet is returning from an extended spell out of football entirely, and the coaching staff seem clear-eyed about the risk of reinjury if he is reintroduced too quickly. It is a reminder that squad depth issues do not get solved by ignoring medical caution, even when the calendar is unforgiving. Liverpool would rather have Jacquet fit and available from September than rushed back for a Sunday friendly in Illinois that means nothing in the league table.
Bajcetic and Endo edging back into view
There was better news elsewhere in the engine room. Stefan Bajcetic is now training close to fully with the group, a significant marker given how disrupted his recent seasons have been by fitness setbacks. Wataru Endo is following a similar curve, described as closing in on full training rather than already there, with the upcoming Monaco friendly floated as a realistic target for his first minutes back.
Neither will grab headlines the way Gravenberch, Isak and Wirtz will on Sunday, but midfield cover has been a quiet concern this pre-season, and having both edge back towards availability matters more than it might look from the outside.
Our verdict
Results from a pre-season friendly in Chicago will be forgotten within days, but the information Iraola gathers from it will not be. Seeing Gravenberch, Isak and Wirtz share a pitch for the first time, even briefly, tells him more about his attacking structure than any amount of training footage could. Combined with the cautious, sensible handling of Jacquet’s return and the encouraging signs from Bajcetic and Endo, this is shaping up to be a pre-season defined less by scorelines and more by a head coach quietly working out exactly what he has to work with before it actually counts.