Liverpool forward Luis Diaz simply has too much pressure on his shoulders at the moment.
After a blistering start to the season, Diaz has dipped a little for Liverpool of late. He did have a perfectly good goal ruled out against Tottenham Hotspur recently, but having seen it chalked off, the 26-year-old hasn’t found the net in six league games.
Three goals in 10 matches across all competitions isn’t a bad return, though. And speaking to Colombian outlet AS, Diaz’s national team coach Nestor Lorenzo suggested that the £50m man has a little too much pressure to score.
“The first thing we did was tell him [Diaz] that he should not put the team on his shoulders nor that the team’s responsibility weighs on him,” says Lorenzo. “People expect him to score 4 goals per game and that’s not normal.
“His performance has been good and we hope he improves with training and knowledge with his teammates.
“In football you need partnerships and in two [international breaks] he was injured and missed those games that would have given him a little more rapprochement. But we have confidence in him, in his position and in his role. We don’t want him to be the saviour either.
“I notice that if he doesn’t score two goals he’s played badly, and that’s not the case. At Liverpool he plays every three days and here every month.”
Diaz feeling the pressure
With James Rodriguez now into his thirties, Diaz is the main man in Colombian football. As a result, there is big expectation on him every time his national team play.
Just like Mohamed Salah at Egypt or previously Sadio Mane with Senegal, it’s left to a Liverpool attacker to drag his team forwards.
So far, you’d have to say that Diaz hasn’t been quite as successful at this as a Salah or a Mane.
41 caps have brought just nine goals and it’s fair to say that there is still so much more to come from the former Porto man.
The same is certainly true of his Liverpool career as well. Nobody is looking for Diaz to score two or four in every game, but we could with a little more output.
