There was a time when it was common for players to report for pre-season out of shape, and the first weeks were spent in shedding excess pounds as well as getting fit again.
And whilst many had thought that those days were gone, José Mourinho’s comments about one of Real Madrid’s new signings Bernardo Silva suggest that may still apply in some cases.
Silva made his debut as Real Madrid beat Ferencváros in a pre-season friendly in Hungary, and afterwards Mourinho commented that Silva is the type of player who does not do anything during the holiday period, and that he came back with a much lower level of physical fitness.
For earlier generations the summer break was really a holiday. They could eat and drink what they liked, and could do little serious training.
Today’s top players do not have such a luxury – they are regarded as effectively elite athletes who happen to play football as a living. Their diets are monitored, their training is carefully planned, and clubs track everything from workloads to recovery. Even during holidays, players will often be given individual programmes to maintain their conditioning.
And that means that they rarely switch off completely, either mentally or physically.
There is another reason the old footballer could get away with more — social media did not exist.
Players from previous generations could disappear on holiday and largely do whatever they wanted. There were no smartphones recording their every move, no Instagram posts being scrutinised by supporters, and no photographs from a beach capable of going around the world within minutes.
Today’s players have to be considerably more careful. A photograph of a footballer looking overweight, drinking heavily or simply appearing to be enjoying himself can quickly become a talking point, particularly if his club then loses a match.
That does not mean players of the past were all behaving badly on holiday, but they enjoyed a level of privacy and anonymity that today’s footballers simply do not have.
The modern player is therefore under pressure to look like a professional athlete even when he is not at work. And clubs have a much better idea of what their players are doing — and how they are preparing — than they did 30 or 40 years ago.
