Liverpool star Ibrahima Konate misses training on international duty - update 'expected in the coming hours'

Liverpool defender Ibrahima Konate was omitted from training on international duty.

The centre-back sat out France’s session on Tuesday. Konate and captain Kylian Mbappe did not rub shoulders with the rest of Didier Deschamps’ squad at Clairefontaine. The pair were ‘spotted signing autographs in basketball shoes before leaving the court and returning to the gym for treatment’ per Le Parisien.

Konate arrived for France duty after suffering a quad injury in Liverpool’s 2-1 loss against Chelsea last Saturday. The defender was replaced in the second half, with Reds head coach Arne Slot not wanting to risk the issue being aggravated.

“I don’t know if it is a big injury, but what I do know is he limped a little bit and when I asked him he said he felt his quad a little bit,” said Slot. “Then, for me, all alarm bells go off because in another sprint you never know if that is going to go good.

“It was also already a substitution I had in mind, maybe for a few minutes or a little bit later, because the right centre-back had a lot of ball possession and we needed to create from that position. We all know Ryan [Gravenberch] is quite good in that. It might be OK that he went off early enough but it was clear I had to take him off because he was limping.”

According to Le Parisien, ‘an update is expected in the coming hours to determine the rest of their (Konate and Mbappe’s) schedule’. France face Azerbaijan in a 2026 World Cup qualifier on Friday before facing Iceland three days later.

Konate is one of only three senior centre-backs at Liverpool alongside Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez. Giovanni Leoni, signed from Parma in the summer transfer window, suffered a devastating ACL injury on his debut last month and is set to be sidelined for around a year.

Konate form addressed

Konate has started every Premier League game so far this season alongside Van Dijk. However, the former RB Leipzig man’s performances have faced scrutiny, with the Reds losing their past three games in all competitions.

Asked about Konate’s performances before the Chelsea defeat, Slot said: “What I think is if you are losing a game of football, as we did against Galatasaray and against Palace, then it doesn't help if you lose a ball a few times very easily. He has been one of them, definitely not the only one because against Galatasaray I think apart from the penalty they created three or four moments and all three or four from us losing a very simple ball without any pressure, which happened to him once in the Crystal Palace game and once against Galatasaray.

“If you then lose a game of football, there's so much focus on that moment and then all of a sudden [the] 90 minutes have been very, very poor, which is not the way I analyse a game. Especially not afterwards where I have the time to analyse, to watch it one more time, and see what we did well and what we did wrong. In the last two games, it has been obvious and clear we've made a few errors, not only him but also others, that we're not used to. If you do things people are not used to and you lose a game of football then normally he, other ones and the manager gets criticised.