by West Ham travel to north London in less than two days and Julen Lopetegui has given the answers in his usual pre-match press conference. It comes at the end of another international break that has seen Hammers players disappear across continents and oceans to represent their national teams.
It is always a time that managers or head coaches dread when players sustain injuries due to the stress of long-distance travel and the demands of high physical performance.
What’s worse for West Ham is that some of their squad members had not yet reported back for duty on Thursday afternoon, following reports yesterday that planes had been chartered for Mohammed Kudus, Michail Antonio and Edson Alvarez to try and get them back on Time.
Kudus in particular faced the challenge of returning from Libya – other international teams recently had to wait 18 hours for delayed flights without food or water: bleak for the players and chaotic for the coach when looking for his starting eleven!
Lopetegui admitted this in his conference:“It’s true that we have a lot of players in many countries, but at the moment we don’t have everyone here. We won’t all be together until the last moment, which is always difficult.”.
And the team isn’t scheduled to train until this afternoon at 4 p.m., so Lopetegui doesn’t even know which of his “returnees” are fit or which may be injured.
Sounds like chaos lurks behind the scenes and beneath the calm exterior he portrayed at the conference – with less than two days to get everything lined up for a midday start on Saturday. Don’t you just love an international break? And the good news? There’s another one in November.
