Three Arsenal FC players, who were granted a four week holiday following their extended tours of duty in the 2016 European Championship, will miss the Premier League regular season opener. Arsenal Manager Arsene Wenger confirmed today that Mesut Ozil, Olivier Giroud and Laurent Koscielny will not be match fit to take on Liverpool a week from tomorrow.
The latter two played in the 2016 European Championship title game with France; the former reached the Euro semifinals with Germany.
The troika have not returned to training yet, and Wenger said “the Liverpool game will come too early for them,” after Arsenal’s 8-0 destruction of Viking in an international preseason friendly.
It was previously expected that that the trio could miss this one given what Wenger told the club’s official website.
“You consider the rest time because France had a long, long go and I believe that they need four weeks’ holiday because they need to recover from that.”
“It takes you two or three weeks to regenerate. So overall I believe that most of them we are giving four weeks holiday to recover completely, and they need to come back with hunger. That disappointment to lose a final, it takes some time to recover from that.”
Wenger also assessed the players’ performance in the Euros.
“The French players, Giroud and Koscielny, had a good tournament [even if] they didn’t finish as well as they hoped.”
“I think Ozil had a good tournament as well. I met him after the game with France, he was of course very disappointed but most of them had good performances.”
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