27 Jul 2021 23:39:48
Ed001, I had some questions about pre-season friendlies.

1) Is the main objective of friendlies to build player fitness and conditioning or are they just showcase events?

2) Is there an optimal number of pre-season games that a side should play? For instance, Chelsea played 7 pre-season games in 2019 (plus the Super Cup), while this year, it will be 4 games (plus the Super Cup) after one of our matches got cancelled. Will such a low number of games affect our preparedness?

{Ed001's Note - 1. Fitness and conditioning are the main objectives, though some of the events can be about money and building a fanbase in a country or region as well. But the team and manager are focused on getting the players up to speed in terms of fitness and conditioning. A lot of the time they also give managers a chance to look at some new ideas he has or fringe/young players.

2. There is no optimal, as it will vary from year to year and person to person as to what they need. Too few or too many can affect the team, but not so much now as once would have been the case. These days most of the players have a diet and training plan they follow over the holidays and so only need a few weeks training and a couple of games to be back at it. The only time it is likely to really show up as an issue, having too few games I mean, is if you are up against a team early on who have had competitive football and tuned themselves properly. For example, if you take on a team that has already had a run in the Europa League qualifiers to get the players prepared, then it would show. Otherwise, pretty much everyone will be in a similar position this season as the Euros and Copa America interfered with everyone's preparation.

It might even turn out to be an advantage later on, as players are fresher than they usually would be, having played less football. It is very small margins we are talking about, but tiny margins are the difference between winning and losing these days.}

1.) 28 Jul 2021
28 Jul 2021 14:20:24
Lovely stuff. Cheers Ed001.

{Ed001's Note - very welcome.}