Inside new Chelsea boss Mauricio Pochettino’s gruelling pre-season training camp that left stars ‘broken and in tears’
MAURICIO POCHETTINO is preparing to put his Chelsea squad through a brutal two-week training camp before pre-season gets underway.
Interim boss Frank Lampard claimed the Blues needed “some physical work” when he took over from Graham Potter until the end of last season.
And new head coach Pochettino, 51, looks set to try and address those fitness issues during his first weeks in charge.
Tottenham ranked second for distance covered during the Argentine’s time in North London.
And according to talkSPORT, he will attempt to implement similar practises at Stamford Bridge to get his Chelsea players up to speed.
One of the main ways he plans to do this is through the “Gacon test” – which is described as an “intermittent shuttle run exercise”.
Explaining this technique in his book “Brave New World”, Pochettino said: “To start with, the players have 45 seconds to cover 150 metres, with a 15 seconds rest.
“In each subsequent 45-second rep, they have to run 6.25 metres further, with the intensity steadily increasing.”
Former Southampton striker Rickie Lambert recalled going into Pochettino to ask him to relax his relentless drills during his time at St Mary’s.
He said: “I went out [of the office] and went back to the lads made up, thinking, ‘yep, just done it for you boys, next Monday gonna be sorted’.
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“So, I played the game, 90 minutes again, come in Monday, not only did we do 12, we did 24 runs – 24 runs and I just knew, I was running around laughing and almost crying and I knew what he was doing, he was breaking me and he did, he broke me.”
Another ex-Saints man, Kelvin Davies, has also spoken about Poch’s rigorous training.
He told FourFourTwo: “One session went on for an hour and 15 minutes – a continuous half, it didn’t stop.
“I remember Morgan Schneiderlin sitting on the floor next to me after he’d tracked a run, saying, ‘F***ing hell, I think I’m going to die!’ Then he just got up and ran again.”
Pochettino’s Chelsea players can expect similar training routines ahead of their pre-season camp.
They face Wrexham in the Florida Cup in the US later this month, before taking on Borussia Dortmund in Illinois 10 days before their opening Premier League game at home to Liverpool.
Chelsea finished 12th last season, missing out on European football altogether.
It was their worst finish since the 1993/94 campaign when they came 14th under Glenn Hoddle.