“Like we always do. We’ve been through a pretty demanding time recently, with matches every three days. Because we don’t have a huge number of players, which would allow the coach to rotate the squad, it hasn’t been easy. Nonetheless we’ve come through it pretty well. So I hope we can stay on this dynamic, with relatively few injury worries. It’ll be good to have some freshness in the side and to be playing at the same rhythm as our opponents, just once a week.” Is the important thing now to focus on recuperation to avoid injuries?
“We managed to avoid injury trouble when we were playing a lot of matches while most other sides were just playing once a week. Now that we’re back to a more regular schedule, we can train and prepare all the players together, which wasn’t the case in recent weeks. We had to be careful to tailor the players’ training workloads according to who was playing a lot and who wasn’t. We had to have separate training sessions with players who were often disappointed to be on the bench or not to be taking the field in order to keep them in good physical shape. Now things are more or less back to normal.” Is fatigue starting to sink in on a day-to-day basis?
“It’s okay. We’re near the end of a long a hard season. Some of the players have played almost 50 matches so far. That’s a lot! So I’m keeping my fingers crossed because so far, things have gone well. We’ve got five matches left to play with a lot at stake, and we need to approach in the best possible condition.” Have preparations for next season begun yet?
“No, we’re concentrating on the end of the season and the objectives we’re aiming for. For next season, we’ll start with preseason, which is usually at the beginning of July.”
