Ryan Gravenberch, Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz are set to feature in Liverpool’s pre-season friendly against Leeds United in Chicago on Sunday, Andoni Iraola has confirmed.
The trio joined the Reds’ training camp in the USA last weekend and are in line to make their first appearances of the summer at Soldier Field.
Speaking to Liverpoolfc.com, Iraola said: “With Florian, Ryan and Alex, they’ve been the ones arriving late.
“I think we’ve been cautious in terms of giving them the time to reach to the level where the others are, because they’ve been training for two weeks before them, but my idea is that the three of them will play the last game against Leeds.
“Probably we’ll have to restrict their minutes. We still have another three weeks before the start of the season where they will play more, we can push them more.
“But I think we need them to start as soon as possible because sometimes they have to make the mistakes now, so we can have time to correct them.”
Iraola also revealed that a decision is yet to be made on whether summer signing Jeremy Jacquet will be involved after the defender missed the friendlies against Sunderland and Wrexham due to discomfort in training.
“With Jeremy we still don’t know if it’s worth it or not to put him in against Leeds,” explained the head coach.
“He did the first part of the pre-season, let’s say, very well. Now he’s feeling some discomfort, so we don’t want to rush him.
“He comes from a lot of months without playing. And obviously I would like to try with him with Virgil [van Dijk] when he recovers, because with the injury of Joe [Gomez] we’ve been without senior centre-backs. But we have to be careful with Jeremy, yes.”
There was further positive news on Stefan Bajcetic and Wataru Endo, with both midfielders stepping up their training during the USA tour as they edge closer to returning to action.
Iraola said: “Stefan is training basically fully with the team. Wataru has started training more progressively but [is] very close to being ready.
“I hope Wata can play probably against Monaco. He should be able to have some minutes.”
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