Jurgen Klopp says he may not immediately rush Virgil van Dijk back into Liverpool action after his exertions at the World Cup.
Dutch captain Van Dijk played in every minute of the Netherlands' run to the quarter-finals in Qatar, having previously played in every minute of Liverpool's Premier League and Champions League campaigns this season.
The centre-back saw his penalty saved by Argentina goalkeeper Emi Martinez in last Friday's defeat in the last eight, and he is already back in training with the Reds squad in Dubai.
But while the likes of England duo Jordan Henderson and Trent Alexander-Arnold could go straight back into the Reds side, Klopp has suggested Van Dijk may need a little longer to recover.
“Yeah, there’s a chance, of course – they train already,” said Klopp on the returning players after Friday's 4-1 friendly win over AC Milan.
“Hendo is already training here. Virg is training here, but I don’t think we will try that. Hendo we will see, Trent we will see.
“But this group worked now together for nearly two weeks and we made a real step and that’s cool.
“I don’t know in this moment (who will play). I hope we all get through it and we all know in England, and in Europe in general, there’s kind of a virus going around, so we hope we can stay out of that.
“Then we will make the decision obviously on Wednesday who can play on Thursday.
“But it’s good and will be a very interesting game after that period but I’m looking forward to it.”
Klopp was delighted with the displays of several young players in Dubai, with teenagers Bobby Clark and Ben Doak both assisting goals for Darwin Nunez, who scored twice in the second half after first half efforts from Mo Salah and Thiago Alcantara.
"When you bring on the kids [in the] second half and you see the pass from Bobby Clark and the whole performance from Stefan (Bajcetic), the performance from Mel [Frauendorf] as a right full-back and then Ben Doak comes on, 16 years old, and is this kind of natural force, it's really cool to see," said Klopp.
"In these 10, 11 days, the kids especially, everybody made a real step forward. That's why these things are so important, that we can involve them.
"And in general, tonight was the result of the last 10 days what we saw in training and tonight we could bring it on the pitch, which is obviously nice."
He continued: "It's absolutely cool. I'm not sure the Academy could watch the game tonight but when you see these boys and performing in a game like this, it's cool. It's a real physical game, adult football is a physical game and the boys need to make these steps [so] they can get ready for it step by step.
"How I said, the physical part will come but until you are not that strong, you can create a lot of ideas, you can do things a bit smarter.
"And when you see what Bobby did with the pass for Darwin... and then Darwin scores twice, so really nice obviously."
