I’ve been wondering whether the Jota tragedy didn’t impact the pre-season even more than we think. Usually, when the players come back from their summer break, they are then right away subjected to a relentless physical training in order to prepare them for the season ahead.
The announcement of Jota’s death, the burial, the commemorations and the whole media circus around this took place just in that time. What did they lose, maybe two weeks? That would be enormous, considering that the whole of pre-season training is roughly five weeks or so. And even if they did train a bit during that time, getting fit must have been the last thing on their minds, also for the rest of that pre-season preparation.
For a player like Chiesa, who needed more than others a lot of physical training before the season after all the injuries, this must have been a bummer.
Time wise in terms of training, I don’t think they lost much. The players were just about to report for training on July 8th. If anything, they probably lost a few days of rest, getting there earlier or going directly to Portugal.
We will never know how much it affected the group as they were just about to going back to work because it’s also individual. There is no measurement for that. With time, we might get some stories how it all went, but you simply cannot tell. It’s mental, it’s emotions.
We will also never know how the pre-season was done from a purely physical preparation point of view, which can be good or bad whether you make 10 changes in the transfer market, some late (and of course that doesn’t help), or 0. We had it under Klopp.
It’s a likelyhood that it wasn’t done properly. It can all be connected, but not everything can be of the same weight when we talk about different factors that brought us a season below standard. I personally think Jota’s tragedy is a factor (or was at the time), but not such a big one or main one. Just an opinion.
Why? It is right there in the quoted text. And when Gatusso was asked why Chiesa is different he didn’t say “what are you talking about? There is no such policy.” He responded by validating the question and implicitly acknowledged the policy exists.
Obviously this is not enforced at gun point or with penalty of imprisonment, but it is notable that he has decided to not be part of that. That is highly suggestive that is not right with him beyond the niggle that is keeping him out. Maybe a big loss of confidence in his own body such that doesnt see the value on bonding with his team mates because he has so little faith he’s going to be fit enough ever join up with them in a way that allows him to contribute
From what I see after a few clicks, Scamacca left their training camp in September when he got injured. That’s why I felt Chiesa leaving now wasn’t the only case of a player not remaining with them by default, no matter what the injury or situation is.
And who knows, Chiesa is healthy on paper recently, but even for us there’s been cases of him dropping out of the squad before games and Slot saying he wasn’t feeling well. Whatever that was at different times.
Yet another crock we’ve been conned into taking from Italy. Mo aside (we paid a world record for Ali and he’s had his own niggles) when have we got a great deal buying in Italy?