Ao Tanaka, Junior Firpo and Brenden Aaronson will be the final three Leeds United players due to report back to Thorp Arch after their international exploits.
The trio formed half of the six Leeds players in action for their respective countries on Tuesday but all face considerably longer flights home than the others.
The matches of Wilfried Gnonto, Charlie Crew and Mateo Joseph were all in Europe and so it is considerably easier for them to get themselves back in good time.
However, after playing 90 minutes for Japan, Tanaka faces a good 14 hour flight back to Leeds, though his game kicked off at 11.35am BST, which is somewhat of a consolation.
Firpo also played the full match for Dominican Republic over in Bermuda, while Aaronson got 90 minutes in the USA’s 2-0 defeat at Mexico.
When Tanaka, Firpo and Aaronson are due back in Leeds
Given the length of the flights back to Leeds, Tanaka, Firpo and Aaronson were always going to be at a disadvantage for their preparation ahead of Friday’s clash with Sheffield United.
The fact they all played every single minute, though, makes matters worse. That said, Tanaka and Firpo should get a decent bit of time to recover.
According to Leeds Live, both Tanaka and Firpo are due back at Thorp Arch as early as this morning, which gives them over 48 hours to be ready.
The international duo can use today as a full day of recovery, before potentially taking part in full team training on Thursday so they are ready to start.
However, things aren’t so easy for Aaronson. At the time of writing, Aaronson‘s match only finished a matter of hours ago.
Aaronson faces a flight of at least 14 hours and with other players from England such as Josh Sargent and Antonee Robinson also playing for USA, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he had to land in London.
As such, it is said Aaronson will not be back at Thorp Arch until tomorrow morning at the earliest, meaning he will be unable to take part in any kind of training session.
Farke will be fuming at Mauricio Pochettino for use of Aaronson
Given USA’s game against Mexico was only a friendly, Mauricio Pochettino could have handled Aaronson’s minutes so much better.
Aaronson played 78 minutes of the 2-0 win over Panama on Sunday morning and after that game, five players were sent back to their clubs for load management.
Unfortunately, Aaronson was not one of them, despite enjoying one of the busiest seasons at club level to date considering the intense nature of the Championship.
Now Farke is likely to be without his only proper number 10 in arguably the biggest game of the season to date.
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