English Premier League: Moyes supportive of the international friendly matches
David Moyes has come out and admitted that club’s dread losing players to injury due to their duties for the international teams but has also accepted the fact that international football adds a different scenario to the game of football.
Moyes, who welcomed back most of his players from international duty without any injuries was lucky in this regard unlike Liverpool who saw their captain, Gerrard get injured in England’s 2-1 defeat to France in mid-week.
Moyes said, "We are happy for players to go and play in the championship games, the World Cup - but I think we find the friendly games a little intimidating. For a player to play and get injured in a game like that can be difficult. But
we have to live with the fact. We are always going to want international football. As a supporter you want it, I'm a manager and have always enjoyed watching it."
English Football Association (FA) have accepted to pay Gerrard’s wages till he recovers as the club has claimed insurance on their player from the Football Association as they were the ones responsible for getting him injured in the first
place. Everton’s manager went onto say, "I don't think we are going to get rid of it but if clubs get an injured player it would be ideal if there was some way for the money to get paid out. We pay the wages, so if a player is playing for someone else when
he gets injured maybe the countries could cover it - but I don't think there is enough money to do that. That's where I think we club managers have a problem. We lost Marouane Fellaini for four weeks from the last international week, when he got injured [playing
for Belgium] against Austria. We were really disappointed about it but it happens all the time."
Club managers and international team managers usually have an agreement on how much a player can play in friendly matches usually but it isn’t always as simple as that every time. Moyes explained, "There is contact, but I wouldn't say
there is a lot of communication. The international managers need to do their job. There will be the odd occasion when you have to phone to ask if they can look after somebody. For example, Stuart Pearce phoned me regarding Jack Rodwell, asking how he was.
I said I felt if he could play 60-70 minutes that would be ideal, but it would be his decision. I think Jack came off after about 70 minutes for the England Under-21 team, so that was fine. But if every manager could ring up and say, 'Just take my player off
after an hour', the international manager couldn't make all those changes."
Everton face Sunderland in their next league match on Monday night. They lost their last league matchup which was against Arsenal at Goodison Park by two goals to one.
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