Steve Nicol has blasted Antonio Conte’s ‘nonsense’ of seemingly running the Tottenham players into the ground during their pre-season tour of South Korea, as he told ESPN.
The Anfield legend didn’t like what he was hearing from Tottenham’s training sessions and how they are running ’42 lengths of the pitch’, after pictures emerged of the players collapsed to the floor after a session.
To no-one’s surprise, Conte is running the ship like an army general ready to take his troops out for battle, so these hard-hitting ways from the Italian are expected.
In the past, whether it be at Juventus or Chelsea, those ways have worked and they have resulted in the former midfielder putting trophies in the cabinet of those clubs.
The Tottenham faithful will be hoping those same results follow suit in their colours, but his methods haven’t sat well with former Liverpool title and European Cup winner, Nicol, who had this to say.
“Brain damage, that’s what they are getting out of it,” said Nicol. “I’m sorry, this is madness. This three-times-a-day nonsense and running 42 lengths of the pitch at the end of the day.
“I am sorry. There is one thing to get your players fit, but there is another thing in trying to break them. That seems to me what is happening here. I don’t understand that, whatsoever.
“I never have understood it. This three times a day and this completely annihilating players. You don’t have to do that.
“We are always talking about the whole package here. It’s not just about being 100% fit. There is something to be said to ‘play for your manager and for your club’. There are different ways of doing that, I get that.
“But I would be talking to the manager saying ‘hold on a second, I want to know how this is good for me? That you are running the guts out of me to the point that I am lying on the ground, wanting to go to sleep and never wake up’. There has to be a little bit of heart and soul involved in hard work.”
WINNING ALL THAT MATTERS
At the end of the day, Conte is a proven winner and his early start to life at Spurs has seen him change the mood around the place.
Tottenham looked dead and buried when they were being thrashed 3-0 by Manchester United when Nuno Espirito Santo was in charge.
But that’s where their new face in the dugout sprinkled his magic on the team and helped guide them to Champions League football in May.
Those in Tottenham colours crave trophies, and if Conte can put that on the table, then the players won’t care one jot if they have to do an extra few laps of the track.
At the end of the day, winning football is the one that speaks loudest and Spurs have been doing plenty of that under their trophy-laden coach.
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