Liam Cooper may hold an advantage over Robin Koch and Diego Llorente heading into next season with Leeds United.
Tyler Roberts and Ezgjan Alioski, if he signs a new contract, are others who may yet have an edge on the likes of Kalvin Phillips or Mateusz Klich heading into pre-season.
All of those players at Euro 2020 will start pre-season with Marcelo Bielsa as early as their nations’ tournament exits will allow, after a brief rest.
CIES Football Observatory, a research group within the International Centre for Sports Studies, has crunched a raft of numbers on the summer tournament.
The research said: “National teams with players active in the most competitive clubs have greater chances to win trophies.”
In other words, the more players a country has playing at a higher club level, the further that nation will go in Euro 2020.
It is no surprise to see the squads of France, Germany, Spain and England come out with the best squads on paper and, thus, the shortest odds of advancing to the latter stages.
North Macedonia, Scotland and Wales rank as the worst teams in their respective groups and early exits would release their players for pre-season earlier.
Given how important we know pre-season is to Bielsa, the time he gets to spend on the grass with Cooper and Roberts this summer will stand them in good stead ahead of the curtain-raiser in mid-August.
Should Koch, Llorente and Phillips go as deep into the tournament as the experts expect, their returns to pre-season will be much later and may pose questions for Bielsa when the Premier League starts up.
While Roberts’s main competition, Rodrigo and Patrick Bamford, will have no international distractions this summer, an early Scotland exit really could set Cooper ahead for the new campaign.
Koch and Llorente had excellent debut seasons, injuries aside, and how Bielsa picks his best two from a quartet including Pascal Struijk will not be easy.
An extra fortnight or more in pre-season will aid Cooper’s cause no end.
