General Sport & Fitness

Middlesbrough FC’s pre-season work out in the Algarve Cup

5 August, 2008

To most football fans, a trip to the Algarve sounds likes a great way to get yourself ready for the forthcoming football season. For the Middlesbrough players though it’s a different story. Ahead of the Premiership season they took part in the Algarve Trophy, competing against Celtic, Cardiff City and Vitoria Guimaraes.

Mfc

The training base in Faro, Portugal offered the coaching staff more time to put the players through the paces ahead of fixtures against Celtic and Vitoria Guimaraes. Training with Garmin Forerunner’s the coaching staff were able to keep a track on how the players were progressing ahead of the new season and ensure they were progressing at the necessary levels in comfortable 28oC heat. Check out the Motionbased logs of a couple of the sessions the players endured, with 8km covered in one session I’m sure the players were ready to hit the pool.

An intensive training session on the Monday focused on pressing and counter attacking, covering short distances, you can see the maximum speeds were hitting 20mph for short distances. Perfect for the building of stamina of the players ahead of the season. In the afternoon, the coaching staff focused on high heart rate exercises such as dribble track exercises. I’m sure the team were ready to hit the ground running for the next days game against Celtic, and but for a late equalizer by Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink they would have taken the spoils in an entertaining match.

Wednesday morning saw a well earned rest for the players ahead of a stiff training session in the afternoon. Focused on short matches and dribble track again, you can see from the track logs the players covered nearly 8km in slightly milder conditions (26oC). The map coverage graph gives you an idea of how much of the pitch these guys have to cover as a professional footballer.

An easier morning session the following day gave the team a chance to focus on the fixture in evening against Vitoria Guimaraes. Gareth Southgate fielded two different sides for each 45 minutes, and this was looking like a stalemate was the most likely result until Dinis curled in a 25 yard free kick to win the game for the Portuguese. This result and Cardiff City’s victory over Celtic saw the Welsh team lift this years Algarve Cup.

As the team took a well earned break on the Golf Course the next day, they knew the build up to the Premiership season was now really on and more hard work lay ahead before the season begins.