Pre-season used to be a time when football players could kick back and relax while the club paid for them to fly off for a supposed “training camp” on the Spanish coast.
Not anymore.
This summer we’ll lose most our of squad to at least one of the European Championships, the Copa America, or the Olympics – and we’ll fly whoever is still around over to the United States for glorified friendlies against Chelsea and AC Milan in the exotically-named International Champions Cup. All that is before you factor in two possible Europa League qualifiers and a season which is expected to start on August 13th.
Now Klopp has got another shock in store for his players – they’ll be expected to take part in TRIPLE training sessions ahead of the Premier League’s kick-off.
“It’s triple training sessions, of course,” he said.
“I’m really looking forward to pre-season. The problem with pre-season is that for the first three weeks we have 15 players who will have been away at the European Championship and we also have to see how the squad is changing.
“On another planet we would have six weeks together where we train because in this league it is the only time when you can only train. In all of the (pre-season) games we will play we will play out full training. So if we play our best in pre-season then I’ve done something completely wrong. It’s another session, it’s not about beating our opponents. I don’t care about how big the opponent is we will say nothing about the situation.”
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“We have to do a lot to create a base for one year. We stop pre-season in the middle of August – maybe with the players who come back from the Euros it will be difficult so we might have to make their pre-season two weeks longer so that it goes into the season. That might mean they do not play at that stage or they are only allowed to play so many minutes.
“Football is about training and all that we have done is because of the work we’ve done together. We have a special plan of what we want to do with the boys. They cannot go home now when they are off. Nearly all of them have national team games now so you cannot have six weeks off, you have something like four weeks and in four weeks you cannot sleep for the whole time, so you have two weeks completely off and you have a plan and you have to do it.
“That means when you come back you are not at nil, you are at 60-70% and then you can start training. That’s how it works.” (via Echo).
It is thought we will be announcing lots more friendlies in the coming weeks. Games against Tranmere and Huddersfield are reportedly on the cards.