Joel Matip’s latest injury setback will sideline the Liverpool centre-back for a significant period of time, confirmed Jurgen Klopp while speaking to the club’s official website.
Matip was absent from Liverpool FC’s visit to West London where Klopp’s men came out as victors against Chelsea with a 2-0 scoreline in their favour. The Cameroon international was not even present on the bench for the Reds, indicating that he had sustained a major injury issue.
Klopp admitted that Matip could be back to first-team involvement in the Liverpool FC shirt as late as after the October international break, which is nearly a month from now.
“With Joel, it could be slightly different. It’s not the worst thing in the world but a few weeks, a couple of weeks. Probably after the international break he will be ready again. So we have to see. It’s not cool.
In the absence of Matip as well as Virgil van Dijk’s primary partner at centre-back, Joe Gomez, defensive midfielder Fabinho filled the role of the centre half alongside Van Dijk and was a fantastic performer against Chelsea on Sunday.
Fabinho was an absolute class in his showing in an unnatural position for him and kept new Chelsea arrival, Timo Werner, at bay from troubling Alisson in goal throughout the 90 minutes at Stamford Bridge, something Jurgen Klopp was full of praise for in his post-game interview.
“It’s crazy, in one day ‘bam bam’ but we have Fabinho and he played an exceptional game, so that was really, really nice.”
