Liverpool will continue their pre-season training camp in Austria despite the country supposedly being added to the UK’s quarantine list.
Arsenal take on the Premier League champions in the Community Shield on Saturday, August 29, and the Reds’ preparation could be affected.
From 4am on Saturday, people who enter the UK from Austria will be told to self-isolate for 14 days due to the rising rate of coronavirus cases in the country.
However, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp is not too concerned about the safety of his players as they are still in their own ‘bubble’.
The Reds’ fantastic Premier League season saw them finish on 99 points, whilst Arsenal were successful in the FA Cup.
Klopp confirmed the news to Liverpool’s official website, explaining: “So, wherever we would be in the moment - if we would be in England or anywhere else or here in Austria - we would do absolutely everything possible to make sure that we create a safe place.
“This is our first concern obviously because we could have stayed in England, that wouldn’t have changed the situation at all for us, just the big difference for us for the training camp is we have only a short period to prepare. So a training camp makes complete sense for us.
“Since we are here, we trained, apart from two days, every day twice, which makes it really intense. We could do that at home, but then the boys have to drive home, have to go there. It’s just from a training point-of-view, it makes no sense that you put an extra intensity just at lunchtime and say, ‘Wherever you want to go, you can go, but see you at four o’clock or whatever’.
“A training camp is for us very, very important to focus completely on the preparation. We train a lot, apart from that we speak a lot and we eat the right things, sleep enough and all that stuff, so that’s why we wanted to do it.
“And then obviously, the world is still in a difficult place at the moment, in Europe as well, so we had to find a solution for the moment when France came on the list. We found that solution.
“Austria - together with Germany, I would say - in that moment, had the best numbers, is pretty experienced in training camps in the summer, so we found this hotel here and they did an incredible job and now we are here in a safe place.
“We are in our own bubble, do nothing to bring anybody or ourselves in danger and just focus on football. In a couple of days, four or five days, we will be back in England and finish the preparation and play the first really, really important game against Arsenal. So that’s it.”
