Mauricio Pochettino on his arrival at Camp des Loges, January 1, 2021. -
Bertrand GUAY / AFP
Mauricio Pochettino bases his flamboyant style of play on perfect physical condition.
The new Parisian coach takes the reins of the team that runs the least in Europe.
The start of the year 2021 and his demonic schedule leaves little room for the Argentinian and his staff to pull the team up on this plan.
A boring presentation conf like a third confinement, apart from a small moment of grace when he discovered the yellow smile that we already knew everything about his tactical setups before his first match at Saint-Etienne.
Mauricio Pochettino made his shy, so as not to frighten his people too much, including the state of the troops.
With something like: "It is important that all absent are back as quickly as possible to increase competition in the group".
Premier League fans know it better than others, however: to deploy the game he loves, Pochettino demands enormous physical debauchery from his men.
"The harder we work during the week, the easier the weekend game is"
Out of curiosity, we put on the bio written with Guillem Balagué, so as not to be satisfied with just blowing the wind.
The new Parisian manager makes several references to the torture sessions that Marcelo Bielsa inflicted on him at the start of his career, memories which partly built his vision as a coach: "The game we play at Tottenham has many parallels with Newell's in Bielsa.
Intense, at maximum speed all the time, with very high pressure on the field, a lot of almost mechanized movements, to dominate physically and suffocate the opponent when he has the ball ”.
Principles which require a considerable volume of races.
At Espanyol, already, Pochettino managed to save the club from relegation almost assured after a commando preparation of ten days at the end of winter.
His leitmotif, which he exported to England: "The harder you work during the week, the easier the weekend match will seem".
In his book, the former PSG captain describes his favorite exercise in the menu, witness to “his physical demands”.
Gacon test, high intensity sessions and commando training
The Gacon test, named after a French physical trainer who became known in athletics before adapting his precepts to D1 in the 90s: 45 seconds of effort, then 15 seconds of recovery, with a little greater distance to cover each time.
The flexibility of the game system. # PSGlive pic.twitter.com/fVCpoGsPkA
- Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_inside) January 5, 2021
In Southampton, he inaugurated the high intensity midweek session, which looks a lot like the terminator training set up by Fabien Galthié with the XV of France.
A match of one hour to eleven against eleven, without touches or goal clearance, with a throw-in of a ball as soon as the previous one leaves the field.
Confidence of Pochettino: “Some players of the time tell me that they still hear me say 'press, press, press' in their dreams.
One even joked one day with my deputy saying that he needed two hearts to play with me ”.
The last nail in the coffin?
The ex-Spurs coach likes to know the number of kilometers traveled by his team at the end of the match.
On several occasions, he points out in his biography that his team sometimes ran seven to eight kilometers longer than the rival in the big wins.
Paris, the team that doesn't like to run
A sketchy detail, if we consider that the boy arrives in a club where the players hide to run: last year in the Champions League, PSG managed the feat of being the last team on the board in distance by matc: 104.3 kilometers overall, just behind Galatasaray and his little old people in a walker.
It's even worse than the previous season, finished in 30th place out of 32, and the current one does not look much better: 102.5 km on average, with two performances more shameful than the others.
Barely 98 terminals against MU at home, with a few players who were particularly economical with their races (seven Kylian terminals, is that serious?), And 102 kilometers covered during the defeat in Leipzig, ten terminals less than the Germans.
TEN TERMINALS.
It's obviously the same lemonade in the league, even if the numbers are as well concealed as the money from Mediapro.
We still got our hands on those for the 2018-2019 season, the last one contested in full.
Paris trots there at a cruising speed established at 103.7 km / game, the worst average with Lille, its runner-up.
PSG Fitness
Infogram
Let’s give a firm answer here to the most enlightened critics, who will rightly believe that a team that has the ball runs much less than those that try to catch it.
If this is undoubtedly a valid observation in L1, where it is the little ones who monopolize the top of the ranking (Angers, Nîmes and Dijon in 2018-2019), it becomes obsolete in the Champions League, where PSG emerges at 53% of possession hardly, far from the cadors.
Bayern, their executioner in the final, had the ball 64% of the time, which did not prevent them from putting more than six milestones in the sight of the Parisians.
Copy: PSG physical condition
Infogram
In short, at least two questions burn our lips by reading this apocalyptic gift:
1 - Can Pochettino put a team of fat lazy to work?
2 - If so, how, and how long will it take him?
We say that because it is not the three sessions seen so far that will change firmly established (non) work habits.
It was Sebastian, Mauricio's son, who took charge of the physical preparation.
At 25, he joined his father's staff as a sports performance analyst before leading the pre-activation work (the warm-up what) and working on injury prevention for a few months in 2019 at Tottenham.
He will be helped by Nicolas Mayer, a regular at the house, and everyone agrees that Pochettino is not into nepotism, but one can wonder if the young man and his father guess the state of the site.
Because this story has pursued PSG for centuries.
Emery had already been chosen to power a team accused of snoring while Laurent Blanc improved his swing at the Golf National.
The same for Tuchel, of whom we wrote on his arrival that the sessions transported the players so much that they shot faster than lightning.
Like what we knew how to laugh at the time.
“It will not really be easy for the new staff, recognizes the physical trainer Xavier Frezza who works with twenty professional players (Ben Yedder, Batshuayi, Mukiele).
As with Zlatan, there are no longer any hyper rigorous charismatic leaders, apart from Marquinhos.
To make the group adopt more rigorous work, it is necessary to make the executives adhere, even if everyone cannot accept the same expenses.
That said in the short term it seems impossible given the indigestible planning that awaits PSG in January-February ”.
Twelve games in fifty days, has already calculated Pochettino, who must also do with a dozen injured at the back.
“We arrive in a given situation, with the responsibility of preparing the whole group as quickly as possible in a period when the competition is very demanding.
PSG must present themselves on the pitch in their best form in each match ”.
An ill-considered promise for the next two weeks.
Saint-Etienne resumed training four days earlier than PSG, while a dispensable champions' trophy was added to the calendar next week as well as a potentially demanding 32nd of the Coupe de France (against a L1 or L2) the one after.
And for the following months?
“Physically, this season, it's cooked for a club like PSG, judge Xavier Frezza.
There may be a way to do a mini-preparation in February-March with a view to the end of the season, but with the Covid-19, you never know if the squad could be affected and some matches delayed, so this t is very difficult to plan ahead to raise the general level of the team.
At first, it will go more through the speech than through the physical capacity itself.
Pochettino is lucky to have an aura, he had results with his method at Tottenham, he can take the executives with him ”.
Let's pretend to believe it, it doesn't cost anything.
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