Liverpool had seven representatives at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, meaning they received compensation from FIFA that amounts to £1.86 million.
Not quite enough to fund the purchase of a midfielder, but it is something.
FIFA pays teams across the globe for every day each of their players spends at the World Cup, meaning that the Reds picked up a small fee for those who competed in the winter showpiece.
Football’s international governing body outlined in their Club Benefits Programme Report that Liverpool were among a whole host of clubs to be reimbursed for their players’ World Cup exploits.
The Reds received the fifth-highest compensation package of the FA-registered clubs, with treble winners Man City picking up the biggest sum at around £3.5 million as part of the same programme.
Of Liverpool’s seven players who made the trip to the Middle East, Ibrahima Konate progressed furthest in the competition before missing out in the final on penalties to new arrival Alexis Mac Allister‘s Argentina.
Alisson and Fabinho both reached the quarter-final with Brazil before being knocked out by Croatia, while Jordan Henderson and Trent Alexander-Arnold were both dumped out at the same stage with England by the eventual runners-up.
Virgil van Dijk captained the Netherlands, who were also eliminated in the last eight, while Darwin Nunez‘s Uruguay failed to progress from the group stage.
The windfall from FIFA at least recognises the impact that the World Cup had on clubs during the 2022/23 season, disrupting clubs by taking six weeks out of the traditional winter schedule and increasing fixture congestion elsewhere.
It was a particularly challenging campaign from a Liverpool perspective, having already played every game possible in 2021/22, and one which ultimately saw Jurgen Klopp‘s side fall out of the Champions League spots for the first time since 2016.
The £1.86 million figure in no way reflects the carnage caused by the timing of the tournament, but it is perhaps more help than we expected from what has typically been an incompetent governing body in all other senses!
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