While the France team faces Switzerland in the round of 16, the Blues have not been in the best conditions to recover well since the start of the competition.
Between hotels not always adapted to the preparation of a Euro and a generation of players who watch until no time, DD and his staff must be super vigilant.
From our special correspondent in Bucharest,
We checked the schedule of the Hilton Athénée Palace where the Blues sit, in downtown Bucharest. No student party or other bachelor party was scheduled for Sunday evening in the hotel lobby, on the eve of the round of 16 against Switzerland. We say that because on Friday, the day they arrived in the Romanian capital, it was a whole different music. YMCA exactly. Indeed, at the stroke of 6 p.m., in the central hall open to all-comers, about sixty young revelers had booked the places to celebrate the end of their year and to cheer up to the sound of the Village People.
You will admit that we had a more relaxed context for a selection engaged in a European championship.
If we add to this the sometimes precarious conditions they experienced in Budapest, with air conditioning problems in the Hungarian furnace and bedding not always top level, we understand that the question of recovery has become central around the team. of France in recent days.
Especially since to believe Didier Deschamps, the players do not need that to have trouble falling asleep.
"It's a bit of a fight with this generation," he confided at a press conference before Hungary.
We know that this is a generation that goes to bed a little late.
But the hours of sleep are important to be able to recover.
"
"If you're not asleep behind, you're dead"
We did not fall out of the closet either, of course, but the subject nonetheless remains crucial, especially in a group in France which must have suffered from heat to the limit of sustainable since the start of the competition and which sees his players fall like flies in training. However, as Doctor François Duforez, sports and sleep doctor at the Hôpital Dieu in Paris, explained to us in a paper straight out of the archive cupboard, “if you have a sleep deficit, you increase by 1 , 7% the risk of having a muscle injury. "Said like that, we could say that we nitpick a bit, but go talk to the medical staff of the Blues who are wondering if we will succeed in finishing the competition with something other than a team of five ...
“If there is one thing to save for recovery, it's sleep, all the studies prove it. Today, with the players, we do 40,000 things to recover, but if we draw a pyramid, that's the base. If the base of the pyramid is not solid, all we can do behind it, massages, stretching, ice baths, cryo, all that is zero. If you don't have sleep behind, you're dead ”, slice, without appeal, the physical trainer Xavier Frezza, who works with many high level footballers throughout the year. “It is by sleeping at night that our body secretes a whole series of hormones that will allow us to recover well, that we rebuild our energy stock, that we regenerate our body and brain cells. Obviously, if we don't have that, we will be less efficient,we have a greater chance of injuring ourselves, we have weaker immune defenses, ”he explains.
RIP the time of the switchboard at the hotel
We then understand better why N'Golo Kanté, reputed to be one of the best students of the group (for a change!) For everything related to hygiene of life and recovery, seems to be able to put all his friends on the field of efforts and high intensity races since the start of the Euro.
“He pays attention to what he eats, to hydration and he sleeps a lot,” explained the former physical trainer Grégory Dupont in
L'Equipe
last Saturday.
Does that mean that the others are all night owls capable of swallowing up half a football manager season on time or Deschamps snoozing with closed fists?
At the end of the line, the former press head of the Blues in Russia, Philippe Tournon, did not want to play the service poucave.
But he validates the problem.
"The guys are playing in a network, there is no more control possible, you can't do all the rooms all the time to see if the light is on!"
It's part of the revolutions that the France team had to accept.
Before, we just had to say to the hotel switchboard "at 10pm you won't be giving them any more calls" and we were pretty sure the players were asleep.
But now what do you want to do?
They each have one or two phones, the tablet, the computer, it's open bar day and night, there's nothing we can do about it.
"
A real headache for coaches
Without going so far as to play the guards, the eye on the peephole and the baton in hand, the new coach of the TFC, Philippe Montanier, had for a time forced his players to put their laptops in a box before training. Like at school, yes, yes. But in the evening, when going green or when the players are at home at home, the coaches admit their limits. "When they are in their room, they do what they want, we cannot police them 24 hours a day either, even if we would like to! Laughs the former Lensois coach. At one time I learned that my players still stayed up at three in the morning watching series or playing on the console, it is still very problematic. As much in terms of diet, players are starting to be extremely vigilant,as much in sleep we have not yet found the solution. "
Find the Euro calendar
In addition to this, you need to know more about it.
Then there remains what Philippe Tournon calls "the booster shots that the staff must do regularly in a final phase of a World Cup or a Euro. The problem is that even the best will in the world can do nothing against the weight of habits. Xavier Frezza: “It's impossible to correct sleep habits in a few days during an internship or a gathering. A person who is used to going to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning every night cannot say to themselves "well come on, lights out at midnight, thank you, bye". It is a mechanism that takes a long time, it takes months and months to regain a good sleep rhythm. That's why it's important to instill this in them from an early age. "If that did not prevent being world champions in 2018,It doesn't hurt to write that down on a post-it note for future generations.
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Didier Deschamps
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