Ibrahima Konate remains plagued by injury concerns after being substituted during Liverpool’s defeat to Chelsea, with the defender missing France training on Tuesday evening. The 26-year-old joined Didier Deschamps’ squad following the Reds’ loss at Stamford Bridge, but was excused from Les Bleus’ latest session.
Le Parisien reports that both the centre-back – who suffered a quad injury against Chelsea – and France captain Kylian Mbappe, who is nursing an ankle problem, were seen signing autographs in basketball shoes before departing the pitch and heading to the gym for treatment. France welcome Azerbaijan on Friday before making the trip to Iceland on Monday (October 13), with uncertainty surrounding what involvement Konate and Mbappe will have in either World Cup qualifier.
Deschamps had previously downplayed the seriousness of both problems as he maintained the duo would not have answered the international call-up if they were not going to be capable of featuring.
“There are still injuries. I don’t have any additional information,” he said earlier this week. “We’ll have an update when the players arrive. “Kylian is here. He had a small problem that isn’t a deal breaker. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have come.
“The observation is that for the vast majority, they arrive tired. They arrive from one week to three matches. I will have to spread out the playing time more than in September. They are all fit to play.”
Konate was withdrawn after 56 minutes during Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat to Chelsea on Saturday, with manager Arne Slot subsequently confirming the substitution was injury-related.
“I don’t know if it’s a big injury, but I do know that he limped,” the Dutchman explained. “And I asked him, and he said; ‘I feel my quad a little bit’.
“But for me all alarm bells go off because in another sprint then you never know if that is going to go good, so it was already a substitution I had in mind for maybe a little bit later, because the right centre-back has a lot of ball possession, and we all know that Ryan (Gravenberch) is good in there.
“So it might be okay and he went off early enough, but it was clear that I had to take him off because he was limping.”
The Reds will resume their campaign following the international break when they welcome Manchester United to Anfield on Sunday October 19.