NewsJürgen Klopp explains Luis Diaz debut decision

The Reds’ new No.23 enjoyed his first day at the AXA Training Centre on Friday having been on international duty with Colombia when his transfer from FC Porto was completed.

Diaz undertook an individual training session in Kirkby as he met the manager and acclimatised to his new surroundings.

Klopp had been asked at his pre-match press conference on Friday morning if it is ‘far too soon’ for Diaz to be considered for his debut this weekend.

“Far too soon, I don’t know. If he would have been here yesterday [Thursday] and could have trained a little bit, I would have considered it definitely. Now, I don’t know,” replied the boss.

“Give me a second to meet him and ask him how his last two or three days were, because it’s not easy to sit around in Paris waiting for the papers and stuff like this. It’s not the best time of your life, it doesn’t help you with recovery from an intense period he had as well with two games for Colombia, massive travel, all these kind of things. So, let’s have a look.

“I wouldn’t say no because I would be excited as well. A few minutes in a sold-out Anfield is nice. But let’s see.”

During the second section of his preview with the media, Klopp also discussed the internal process that leads to Liverpool recruiting a new player and how the forward will be integrated into the squad…

On his personal involvement in the process of scouting players…

We cannot now watch all interesting [players] closely, me or the coaches; our scouts are doing that, that’s what we have that department for. Very often we just get the hint that we should have a closer look on him or him. And we do that. It doesn’t mean he’s a player for us in the next transfer window or whatever. But with Porto it’s obviously different because Pep and Vitor, I’m not sure, Vitor watched probably all Porto games and Pep a lot. They were really early and told me, ‘That’s a very interesting boy there’ and we should have a closer look. Since then we are watching.

It’s part of the process, of course, watching. But we cannot watch the whole world constantly. But the club is pretty busy with that; if there’s a good player out there we know him, or a real talent out there we know him. Then we just have to make decisions. If it’s interesting for us or not. Do we have somebody in that position or not? Is somebody coming up on that position? Do we have a young follower on different positions? These kind of things. That’s the whole process.

On how he would like the team’s other attackers to react to Diaz’s arrival…

How sportspeople react. First and foremost, nothing happened apart from we brought a really good player in. Now we really have to work with Luis. With all the others of course as well, but with Luis as well. Then we have to see. It’s really nice to have these kind of options. We constantly prepare today and then for tomorrow as well. That’s what we do, that’s what our job has to be. The reaction of players is always they have to perform on their highest level, that always has to be the case.

Our players, even when we had injuries and stuff like this, and we had only three up front available, they pushed themselves to an extreme extent absolutely all the time. That’s why we were pretty successful in the last few years. But we cannot hope we can get through this with three or four players. So we need options. All development is not only, but includes always, fresh blood as well. That’s what we did with Diogo when he came here and it was obviously pretty helpful. Now when we signed Luis it’s exactly the same. Players might have plans for their future but the club has to be ready for pretty much all scenarios. And that’s what we do, between playing games all the time, thinking about these kind of things. This club is too big that it would rely on one single person, if it’s me or a player. We need to be prepared and the club needs to be prepared for all different scenarios. And we feel in a good place in the moment.

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