There is no magic recipe. There won’t be one even if we fill the locker rooms with GPS, wellness questionnaires or stress and sleep monitoring rings. Maybe we will be closer to getting it right, but a short vacation period will arrive again and we coaches will ask ourselves the same question again: how many days off do we give our team? Giving too many days makes us afraid. We put ourselves in the worst case and imagine the players coming back out of shape and already think about the eventual bad streak that will follow a stumble at the start. But giving too few seems to push you to saturate yourself ahead of time since in March the second stretch of the season, where everything is decided, becomes a ball. What is the fair measure, then?
There’s the secret. There isn’t. Or there is not only one. Every year is different, because each team also changes, because the dynamic you bring is different before the break or because your schedule when you return allows you more or less. In fact, no two teams have the same demands on their agenda. In the men’s league there are clubs that are already playing a Cup tie today, there are those that play tomorrow and there are those that do not compete again until next weekend. And there are those who will play three games in six days, for example. In the women’s league there are also different return shifts, to fit the teams’ calendar with the Super Cup and the Valencian derby postponed by the dana. Each coaching staff will have made their calculations, will have overthought their reasons and will have chosen their plan: so many days off, such a job to do and such a return date.
I don’t remember us talking about these types of decisions in the coaching courses. We were obsessed with mixing everything we learned and creating the most complete task in the world. Small goals, cone corridor, three zones, double scoring, wild cards. Objective, slogans, distribution of balls. There is nothing that makes a team fly more than getting the time off management right.
I have always turned in my chair when I have heard that coaches are increasingly—or we are—more managers than technicians. Because you leave your course so excited, wanting to devise your strategies and design dynamic and useful sessions, to correct errors in the video room, to analyze the opponent and draw up a good game plan, and in the end you see that in The balance of managing a team often outweighs other things than purely tactical ones.
It is not just about planning breaks well during this type of Christmas period. It also affects how you order training days during the week. Physical trainers usually recommend a distribution, taking into account loads and how the body responds to the fatigue of playing a game. They will manage the intensity of the sessions and ensure fresh legs. But how do we free the heads? It is obvious that we need players at the right point: light and motivated. Loose legs but, above all, mentally agile.
How is that achieved? Going back to the beginning, there is no absolute truth. Giving two days off before an important match can get you closer to victory than having a big training session, because it relaxes the team, in the same way that it can keep them too distracted. Did Guardiola draw against Everton for having concentrated the team on Christmas night at the City facilities? I don’t believe it. But he hadn’t done it before. Why now? And why not?
