Andoni Iraola's Bold Choices for Liverpool's Champions League Squad

Andoni Iraola has not wasted time showing where the fault lines lie in his new Liverpool squad. His first major call in Europe is as cold as it is clear: no place for Federico Chiesa or Wataru Endo in the Champions League.

Ruthless clarity from a new regime

Liverpool’s 25-man List A for the 2026-27 campaign landed before their opener against Atletico Madrid on 9 September. Two senior internationals, both under long contracts, were nowhere to be seen.

This is not a clerical oversight. It is a statement.

UEFA’s rules are unforgiving. Only 17 non-locally trained players can be registered on List A, and every one of those slots matters. Iraola has chosen to spend them on £123 million signing Bradley Barcola, fellow summer arrival Victor Munoz and even Hugo Ekitike, who is currently injured.

Chiesa and Endo did not make the cut.

The decision cuts particularly deep when you scan the rest of the list. Long-term absentees Conor Bradley and Giovanni Leoni are both registered. Chiesa, edging back from a muscle problem, is not. For a 28-year-old forward already fighting to prove his body can handle the tempo at Anfield, that is a brutal message about where he sits in the pecking order.

Carragher pulls no punches

If there was any doubt about how this looks from the outside, Jamie Carragher removed it. Speaking on The Overlap, the former Liverpool defender stripped away the sentiment.

“Liverpool have got two players in the squad who are never going to play,” he said. “And there are all these quotas, you can only have 17 players and all that. They have got Chiesa and Endo. It’s like they are never going to kick a ball.”

On Endo, he went even harder.

“Endo should have been moved on,” Carragher added. “He has done great, a bit of a cult hero.”

That last line is the sting. The Japanese midfielder arrived, grafted, won supporters over with his work-rate and resilience. Yet in the cold calculus of a new manager and a new cycle, nostalgia does not earn you a Champions League place.

Endo and Chiesa on the outside

The numbers back up the sense of drift. Endo’s role shrank dramatically last season: just eight Premier League appearances and a single Champions League outing. For a player in his thirties, with younger options now crowding the midfield, that trend rarely reverses.

Chiesa’s story is different but just as stark. His Liverpool career has been punctured by setbacks, his rhythm constantly broken by fitness issues. The current muscle injury is not classed as long-term, yet the club have still chosen to prioritise others, including players nowhere near a return.

That tells its own story. When a nearing-fitness attacker cannot dislodge long-term absentees from a European squad, the manager has effectively marked his card.

Both remain tied down until 2027 (Endo) and 2028 (Chiesa). On paper, they are part of Liverpool’s medium-term planning. On the grass, and in Europe at least, they are now on the margins.

Europe moves on without them

Liverpool face Ipswich Town on Friday before the lights go up at Anfield for Atletico Madrid and the start of a demanding league phase. Inter away. Fenerbahce away. A schedule that will stretch Iraola’s group and test his ideas at the highest level.

Chiesa and Endo will be watching those nights from a distance, their roles reduced to domestic cup cameos and whatever league minutes can be scraped from rotation and circumstance. Only a significant injury crisis, and the limited scope for permitted changes later in the campaign, offers a potential route back into the European picture.

For now, Iraola has drawn his line. He has chosen his 17. The rest must either force their way back into his thinking—or accept that, in this new Liverpool, reputation and past service are no longer enough to guarantee a seat at Europe’s top table.