Alexis Mac Allister admits there is no easy answer to the international break issue now once again facing Liverpool. Mac Allister is one of three Reds players who will jet off to South America after Saturday’s Premier League visit of Aston Villa for the latest round of World Cup qualifiers.
Mac Allister is part of the Argentina squad that takes on Paraguay and Peru, while Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz are expected to be involved for Uruguay and Colombia respectively over the next fortnight
This is the last international break until mid-March, with Liverpool having already taken steps to bring their players back as soon as possible to Merseyside after national team duty in each of the last two months.
Mac Allister linked up with Argentina in October despite carrying an injury that forced him to miss the first of his country’s two games and subsequently be restricted to a brief outing from the bench for Liverpool in their 2-1 win over Chelsea in the next match after his return.
And the midfielder has highlighted how the Reds are continuing to discover the best way of dealing with the situation.
“To be honest it’s not at all easy, but you also have to say that we get great support from the club,” said Mac Allister. “Of course, we can’t avoid the different time zones or the long travel times, but we can say that the club has been impeccable with us and whenever we’ve played, they’ve arranged private planes so that we get back in the best way possible to England.
So these are the finer details that help us greatly but obviously the difficulty is there
We can’t deny it and it’s something that we need to continue learning from, to continue to be better as professionals by recovering in the best way because the games come around quickly, the trips are long and ultimately you have to perform.”
Liverpool will at least have an extra day to prepare after the forthcoming international break given they are at Southampton on the Sunday.
Mac Allister is one of only three players – Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo the others – to have featured in all 16 games for Liverpool this season.
The 25-year-old has been operating in a slightly different role in midfield under Arne Slot having been joined by Ryan Gravenberch as part of a double pivot. And Mac Allister has detailed the changes that have been implemented by the new Reds head coach.
Perhaps with Jurgen (Klopp) I played as a lone six,” he said. “So, the position was very different. I was much more defensive than anything else. Nowadays, we play with two sixes, I can be a little freer and if we start with two sitting midfielders and one a little further forward, that changes things
For instance, when the ball goes out to the left full-back, I’m the one who can move further forward and Ryan becomes the number six. So the system has changed a little, but the main ideas are the same. I think perhaps the big change is in having that patience to have longer periods of possession and dominate games more and obviously that creates more chances.
We are working really well. I feel there’s a lot of positivity within the club and we’re working fantastically well with the new manager. We can really see that he has great ideas, his mentality and what he gets across to us is important so we’re happy. We’re still in this transitional phase of looking to get to where the manager wants us to be.”
Saturday evening’s clash against Villa is the final of seven testing games in 21 days for Liverpool. It’s also the third consecutive match at Anfield, with the home crowd having made a huge difference in the 2-1 Premier League win over Brighton last Saturday and the 4-0 Champions League thumping of Bayer Leverkusen on Tuesday
They are incredible,” added Mac Allister. “Obviously, it’s quite different here to the way the fans support their team in Argentina. But I’m not in any doubt on this, and if you ask players whoever come to Anfield I think the majority would say that it’s just crazy the way the people react, how they cheer their team on.
They are obviously ‘crazy for their team’ as we say in Argentina, and I enjoy this a lot because I’ve also played for Boca (Juniors) who have incredible fans and I think these (Liverpool) fans are very special, particularly on a worldwide scale.”
