Iraola Excludes Chiesa and Endo from Champions League Squad
Andoni Iraola has wasted no time laying down the law at Liverpool. His first Champions League squad tells the story in brutal detail.
Federico Chiesa and Wataru Endo are out.
The new Liverpool manager has submitted his 25-man List A for the 2026-27 Champions League ahead of the opener against Atletico Madrid on September 9, and two established internationals have been left on the outside looking in. No injury caveats, no soft landings. Just a hard call.
Iraola’s first big swing
UEFA rules allow a maximum of 17 non-locally trained players in the main squad. Those spots are gold dust. Iraola has chosen to spend them elsewhere.
£123 million signing Bradley Barcola is in. So is fellow summer arrival Victor Munoz. Even Hugo Ekitike, currently sidelined, makes the cut. Chiesa and Endo do not.
That decision cuts through any early-season ambiguity about who Iraola trusts on the biggest stage. He is building his European core, and the pair are not part of it.
Carragher’s blunt verdict
Jamie Carragher did not dress it up when asked about the situation on The Overlap.
"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."
He then turned the spotlight directly on the club’s summer stance over Endo.
"Endo should have been moved on," Carragher added. "He has done great, a bit of a cult hero."
It was a harsh reading of two professionals still under contract until 2027 (Chiesa) and 2028 (Endo), but it chimed with Iraola’s paperwork. On the evidence of the Champions League list, they sit on the fringes of his project.
Two careers stuck in neutral
The numbers back up the sense of drift.
Endo’s role shrank dramatically last season. The Japan international managed just eight Premier League appearances and a single Champions League outing. From reliable squad option to afterthought in less than a year.
Chiesa’s Liverpool story has barely got going at all. Fitness problems have chopped his Anfield career into fragments. At 28, he should be at his peak; instead, he is nursing another muscle injury and watching others move ahead of him.
The latest setback is not classed as long-term, yet that almost makes Iraola’s call more telling. Conor Bradley and Giovanni Leoni, both long-term absentees, have been registered ahead of a player edging back towards fitness. That is not a clerical quirk. It is a clear signal of status.
Europe moves on without them
Liverpool’s immediate focus is a domestic assignment against Ipswich Town on Friday, but the real scrutiny will come once the Champions League anthem hits Anfield next week.
Atletico Madrid arrive to launch a demanding league-phase schedule that also sends Liverpool to Inter and Fenerbahce. Iraola has chosen his travelling party for that journey. Chiesa and Endo will not be on the plane.
Their short-term horizon looks narrow: domestic cup ties, the odd league appearance if rotation or circumstance demands it. Only a severe injury crisis would open the door for a permitted mid-competition squad alteration and drag them back into the European picture.
For now, Iraola’s Liverpool is taking shape without them. The question is whether this is a temporary exclusion or the beginning of the end for two high-profile names who suddenly feel like relics of a previous plan.
