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Arsenal need Laurent Koscielny rested by France with Man Utd next week, says Arsene Wenger
Arsene Wenger has requested that France allow his captain, Laurent Koscielny, to be rested from next Tuesday’s friendly match against the Ivory Coast so that he is fully fit to face Manchester United the following Saturday.
Arsenal are already in a club versus country stand-off with Chile over Alexis Sanchez, who is nursing a hamstring injury but has stayed in South America in an attempt to return for the World Cup qualifier against Uruguay next Tuesday.
Wenger has demanded that Arsenal medics see Sanchez’s scan and warned against taking any “suicidal” risks with a player who broke down with a hamstring at a similar stage of last season. The Arsenal manager also admitted to having had sleepless nights worrying over the health of his international players.
Hector Bellerin is another expected to miss the big Premier League match against Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United at Old Trafford after suffering an ankle injury while with the Spain Under-21s and Wenger is now urging France not to take any chances with Koscielny.
“I’ve never tried to prevent a player from international duty; when it’s a competitive game I never intervene,” Wenger told BeIN Sports. “When it’s a friendly game, for example now Koscielny goes to the French national team, having played every single game apart from the first game of the season with us.
“I understand completely him playing against Sweden, it’s difficult to understand him playing the whole game against Ivory Coast because afterwards we play at Manchester United and then Paris Saint Germain. If it’s not needed, you try to find a compromise that suits both parties. I can’t see the purpose of Koscielny playing the second game.”
Wenger says that he liaises with club staff constantly during international breaks to get feedback on the health of his players.
“You’re always on the phone before the game, but especially after the game to see what happened and how they played,” he explained. “You wait for your statements from your physics because they are in touch with the national associations.
“We have an hour afterwards where we text each other, myself and the physics, to ask: ‘are they alright. Before you start the game, sometimes you have a sleepless night because some of your players have been injured and sometimes you are angry because they play a friendly game, they are overloaded with games and instead of being taken off they play the full 90 minutes.”