Report: Why Brazil substituted Alisson Becker off during Thursday night's win over Colombia

03/21/2025 03:00 AM

Liverpool players have already been getting well stuck into the international break this week.

For those Reds’ stars involved, they’ll have likely been grateful for the change of scenery after what has been a difficult couple of weeks at club level.

On Thursday, no less than 10 senior Liverpool players featured – plus on-loan Giorgi Mamardashvili – with a mixed variety of results.

One who came away on the winning side was goalkeeper Alisson Becker, who played 77 minutes of Brazil’s 2-1 win over Luis Diaz’s Colombia.

Clearly, the fact that Alisson did not play the full 90 minutes is an oddity and will likely cause alarm within the Liverpool fanbase.

Thankfully, an explanation has been provided as to why Liverpool’s No.1 did not finish the game in Brasilia.

Alisson Becker suffers head injury

Liverpool have already been given some bad news during this international break, with Ryan Gravenberch heading home for the Netherlands camp.

And they suffered another potential blow on Thursday when Alisson was taken off after a clash of heads against Colombia.

Having bravely come through the bodies to make a vital punched clearance, the Liverpool keeper was caught late by former Tottenham defender Davinson Sanchez.

With both players down hurt, Brazilian outlet Globo explains that Alisson was taken off as part of concussion protocol.

READ MORE: All 20 Liverpool players on March international duty and their fixtures

With Dorival Junior having already made his allocated substitutes at the time, both he and Colombia boss Nestor Lorenzo were allowed to make a further change.

Brazil went on to win the game 2-1, with a late Vinicius Junior strike cancelling out an excellent Diaz equaliser.

Will Alisson be back to face Everton?

This looked a nasty clash of heads for Alisson and you could clearly see a red mark left on his forehead from where he’d been caught by Sanchez.

However, given Liverpool’s next match is still 12 days away, it seems improbable that he will not be fit to feature against Everton at Anfield.

There is no need to take any risks, though, and it will be interesting to see whether Alisson returns to Merseyside in the meantime.

Brazil’s next game is against Argentina in the early hours of Wednesday morning. There is no exact timeline for when a player is safe to return to playing beyond an initial 48 hours. As a result, Alisson’s involvement in that will likely depend on how the 32-year-old is feeling.

It’s a big one for the Selecao against their hated rivals, though, so if Ali is feeling fine, they’d we’d expect him to be involved.