Preseason tours are not for preparing football teams for the season – they’re for making money.
That’s the reality, and while we’ve all got used to it, we shouldn’t pretend that travelling around a distant continent playing two matches a week on bad pitches is anything but inconvenient for coaches and players trying to prepare for a season which is now less than two weeks away.
Enzo Maresca has only just been appointed and even he couldn’t pretend otherwise.
“In terms of games, to be honest, 5 games in 17, 18 days… it’s a lot of games.”
He knew what he was signing up for, and this is the reality of a coach at a top club now. But for a guy desperate to get his quite specific and technical message across, having to constantly prepare and recover from matches is not ideal for him.
You can see him speaking in the clip embedded here:
