Liverpool’s players have been working hard during the close-season, with a number of Jurgen Klopp’s squad posting evidence of their summer workouts during their holidays.
Mohamed Salah has shared frequent updates, showing off his ever-muscular form in the process, while Jordan Henderson has also recently set tongues wagging with his own impressive conditioning.
However, some hard work can’t be deciphered by the sight of glistening abs. After all, it would seem Darwin Nunez has been just as busy behind the scenes, though in rather different circumstances.
The Uruguayan endured a mixed first-season at Anfield. While he scored 15 goals and established himself as a firm fan-favourite, he found himself out of Klopp’s starting XI come the end of the season after a few difficult moments.
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Picking up a few niggling injuries across the campaign as he adjusted to the physicality of the Premier League, you would hope the 24-year-old will be better acclimatised to the demands of the English top-flight as he heads into his second campaign on Merseyside.
Yet, Nunez’s biggest issue during his first season with the Reds was limited grasp of the English language, which in turn made it more difficult for him to understand Klopp’s demands. On more than one occasion, his manager would bemoan his progress.
“Darwin is a player with a different skillset to all our other players. That’s good, that’s good,” Klopp told reporters in April. “He’s a real handful, he’s a machine, and he will score a lot of goals.
“He’s scored already a decent number of goals. That’s all fine but yes, of course, he is still adapting. His English is still not great, if existing at all. We are working on that massively.
“He has to learn English, that’s how it is. We can translate everything, but in training sessions we cannot have four languages and translate it. It’s a football language so it will help him massively.”
One of the more surreal moments of last season was the sight of Thiago Alcantara, that day not in the matchday squad because of a hip injury, emerging from his place behind the dugout to translate instructions to Nunez, a fellow Spanish-speaker, ahead of the striker’s introduction as a substitute in the 4-3 victory over Tottenham Hotspur. Unsurprisingly, Klopp was most bemused, double-taking after realising what the midfielder was doing.
The fact that Nunez then lost his marker for Richarlison’s last-minute equaliser from a Spurs free-kick did not go unnoticed.
Ultimately spending the majority of the final two months of the season on the bench, the returning Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz were turned to in attack at his expense. With the Portuguese fluent in English, and the Colombian not struggling to the same extent, the pair were at least more natural fits for what Klopp demands from his forwards defensively, with switches between his preferred central role or being stationed out on the left flank arguably complicating his transition.
Yet the evidence on the first day of pre-season training would suggest that Nunez has been working hard at improving his English during the summer break.
One of eight senior players to report back to the AXA Training Centre on day one of pre-season, he demonstrated his improved grasp of the foreign tongue on more than one occasion.
Nunez was first spotted conversing well with his manager as they exchanged pleasantries after the summer break, before joking with Calvin Ramsay in the gym about the Scotland international’s recent dental work.
“Wow! Wow, wow, wow!” he teased after the teenager showed off his new veneers. “I like them!”
Nunez was then filmed geeing up his team-mates, in English, out on the grass when undergoing the lactate test alongside Fabinho, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip.
“Finished holiday now, guys,” he said. “Come on!” much to the amusement of Gomez, impressed by his team-mate’s increased confidence when speaking English.
While all simple enough exchanges, it is still a step in the right direction from Nunez as he rises to the challenge set by Klopp. Having been mocked by rival onlookers immediately after his initial £64m move from Benfica last summer, he is already well-placed to go from strength-to-strength in the new season.
"I think after those first few months of adaption, things began improving,” Nunez declared back to Sky Sports back in February when acknowledging his initial struggles. “I feel at home. I feel happy.
“When I come in, I look forward to training because, luckily, I have people here who speak Spanish. They have supported me really well and they are still supporting me today. That's what we are here to do. We are a team. If we can help each other, that's a good thing.
"My team-mates who speak Spanish are always translating because I still don't understand a lot of things. But watch out, because I am taking English classes. I hope that, in a year and a half, minimum, I will be able to understand everything."
Nearly six months on from such a vow, it would appear Nunez is very much on track.
He will certainly be confident that he can better his 15-goal this year, of course, having previous referenced compatriot Luis Suarez’s own ‘slow’ start at Anfield, along with his own maiden season at Benfica, where he scored just six league goals, prior to a 34-goal campaign that earned him his move to Liverpool.
"It is a case of adapting. Adapting is important - and not only here at the club,” he said in February. “Things have to be good on the football side, but also with your family, because if your family is okay, then you will always be okay. My family and I are good.
"Of course, it's always helpful to speak with Suarez. For me, he is an idol. He is a great example. In the national team, I now have a much better relationship with him.
"We are always talking and he is always giving me advice. I always try to keep in touch with him. I ask him a lot of things because he was at this club and he has a lot more experience than me. He is an important player to give me advice and explain things to me.
"Obviously, I still have many things to work on, for example my finishing. But I think the same thing is happening to me as happened to Suarez. In his second year, he tore it up.
"Something similar happened to me already at Benfica. The first year went very badly for me and in the second, I exploded. Here, I think the same thing is happening. I hope next season will be like that. I'll put my best forward and hopefully I'll get a bit of luck.”
Liverpool might now only be two days into the 2023/24 pre-season, but Nunez is leaving nothing to chance as he looks to follow through on those mid-season predictions. Yes, he needs to nail down a position and follow through with improvements out on the pitch, but you can't fault his attitude with his greater grasp of English already the perfect first step heading into the new campaign.
While too early to declare with certainty that he can follow in Suarez’s footsteps, Nunez has at least given himself a better chance of success as he continues to fulfil his Klopp's demands. As he warned back in February - 'watch out!'
