Why Dominik Szoboszlai didn't want to listen to Liverpool coaches after joining in 2023

Dominik Szoboszlai has grown into one of Liverpool’s most important players during an excellent two-and-a-half year spell with the Reds.

Although he has been eclipsed in recent weeks by both Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz, the Hungarian has still arguably been Liverpool’s player of the season.

One of Szoboszlai‘s key attributes is his relentless fitness levels and a natural capacity to keep running when others are beginning to flag.

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This ability was on show immediately after his £60m arrival from RB Leipzig in 2023, when Szoboszlai instantly replaced James Milner as Liverpool‘s fittest performer in pre-season.

Interestingly, though, former Reds fitness coach Jordan Fairclough has now spoken out on those early days of Szoboszlai’s Liverpool career, claiming that the Hungarian’s confidence in his physique led to some pushback towards coaches’ instructions.

Dominik Szoboszlai felt he knew better than coaches

It would be wrong to characterise Szoboszlai as purely a runner in a football sense, but the 25-year-old is clearly exceptionally fit and knows it as well.

According to Fairclough, this confidence meant he was initially unwilling to follow an individualised plan put together by the coach and his team.

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“Dom Szoboszlai, he came in from Leipzig, really, really good seasons there, playing really well. This isn’t the only player who has this belief, there’ll be many others, but he kind of associated his quality and his class in those leagues as not having to do loads of gym stuff to play well.” he told The Redmen TV.

“But he came to the Premier League, different league, different intensity, so there was like a nice almost daily negotiation period that we went through. Okay like, ‘these are the things that I think you should do today.’ And he’d be like ‘no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no.’

“It was kind of like play the game, you have to kind of play the game a little bit. ‘Okay Dom, what kind of stuff do you like to do?’ and blend it to that. The personal side of it and creating exercises and the buy-in and working with players was really cool as well.”

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Insight offered into more Liverpool players’ regimes

Having spent more than seven years at Liverpool, Fairclough was one of the underrated cogs in the Jurgen Klopp machine at Anfield.

The fitness guru saw plenty of players come and go during that time, and as well as speaking on Szoboszlai, Fairclough offered some more interesting insights into the fitness plans of both Harvey Elliott and Joe Gomez.

“Harvey Elliott as an example, a lot of energy, really competitive, likes full energy and full power, full speed stuff. So, exercises for him to get fired up might be something that’s quite competitive or fun so he can really sort of throw his personality into it,” he explains.

“Whereas a Joe Gomez, for example, kind of a more quiet, mellow type of guy, likes his routine, likes to know what he’s doing, how he’s doing it, quite methodical. So you have to play to the individuals’ characters as well and that was actually really fun.”

Fascinating to get some insight into a rarely spoken about area behind the scenes at the club, even if it does not paint Szoboszlai in the best possible light.

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