‘Players are like Ferraris – no use with a flat tyre’
In a rare glimpse behind the scenes at a top club, Jason Burt spent the week at Watford to see how the squad prepare for match day – including hours of video analysis, games of pool and ‘sexy’ tuna wraps …
Javi Gracia, Watford’s head coach, is sitting in his office at the club’s training ground in London Colney. The quietly-spoken, workaholic 48-year-old has already been there for close to two hours. It gives him thinking time and, as he puts it, “I like being here alone”, even if company is never far away for top-flight football managers. An hour previously, he has already had his first meeting of the day with his staff over a coffee; there will be another this afternoon.
Gracia is invariably the first member of staff to arrive and will be the last to leave at around 7pm. He likes it that way. “Every day, every moment,” he says when asked how often he talks to his assistant, Zigor Aranalde, a fellow Spaniard and one of many on Watford’s staff.
The players have had Monday off, but that does not mean things were easier for the coaches. “The technical staff keep working,” Gracia says. “The most important time is the beginning of the week, when we prepare the different training sessions, exercises, videos.”
Goalkeeper Ben Foster is in the gym, working alone on a Wattbike – something of an obsession for the 35-year-old, who has already been there for half an hour. Within the next 15 minutes every first-team player will have had to clock in or face a fine that rises by £100 a minute. The cut-off point is 9am.
“I don’t see when they arrive,” Gracia says. “I am only interested that they arrive on time. Their first contact with me is on the pitch.”
Every player has to punch in his arrival time on an ipad in the dressing room in A-wing, but there are other elements to this daily ritual. “The player also weighs himself, puts that in and answers ‘well-being’ questions – muscle soreness, how he feels, how he slept, rated from 1-10,” says Alberto Leon, Watford’s head of injury prevention and rehabilitation.
As he talks, Will Hughes and Etienne Capoue play pool in the canteen. The table arrived last year and – along with a table tennis table – has become a social focal point for the players. Capoue is rarely off it. “It’s a big thing,” the French midfielder says. “It’s good for the team spirit. It’s somewhere where we can meet and not talk about football, maybe get to know each other more in a relaxed way. There’s a good vibe.”
That vibe has been helped by Watford’s results. This is the club’s fourth campaign back in the Premier League, having gained promotion in 2015. Under Gracia they are already more than halfway to reaching this season’s target. No team have been relegated with 11 wins and last Saturday’s 3-0 victory over Huddersfield means Watford have six.
Although survival remains the primary goal under the stewardship of owner Gino Pozzo – who has his office at the training ground and is a constant presence – chairman and chief executive Scott Duxbury and technical director Filippo Giraldi, they want more than that. They want to be the best of the rest outside the “big six”, and right now they are seventh, with a trip to winless Newcastle today.
Maintaining that kind of form requires great care, not least from Leon and his 14-strong team, for whom the immediate post-match period is one of the most important times of the week.
“We do a ‘quick scan’,” Leon says. “A five-minute physical examination of every player to check for muscle pain and range of motion and we ask them how they feel. ‘I feel good’ or ‘I feel tired’. It helps give us the information.”
Then there is the food. Physiotherapist Alvaro Garcia Romero, who has a master’s degree in nutrition, explains that a player’s diet is “not only to refuel but to heal. It’s giving them things related to fish oil and also with avocado. Something like a tuna wrap. We try and make the food sexy”.
No pizza? No carbohydrates? “Years ago they thought the player was like a car that you had to fuel,” Garcia Romero replies. “But, OK, if you don’t have good tyres the car won’t go. They are like Ferraris. You can have fuel but if you have a flat tyre, it’s no good.”
Once a week, though, the players are allowed to eat what they want – a relaxation which makes a difference.
On Sunday all the players were in, again no later than 9am. Those who played at least 45 minutes against Huddersfield underwent a recovery session which includes compulsory yoga and, if needed, time in the cryotherapy chamber where the temperature is -125C. A 140-second session can help repair muscle damage and improve sleep patterns.
Those who did not play took part in an intense game-based training session, enabling Gracia to see if anyone is sulking at not playing. “If I see them I know how they are,” he says. “I watch them and I am always thinking of the players who don’t play.”
“Rapido!” The booming cry from Juan Solla, Watford’s assistant coach and head of fitness, rings around the training pitch. It does not need any translation. “Sometimes you have to work hard,” says Solla, who has known Gracia for 11 years. “Sometimes you have to give a sweet.”
Today, unfortunately for the squad, is all about hard work. Aranalde has meticulously measured out the spaces for the exercises, marking them with white tape. Training is sharp, competitive. An outdoor gym has been laid out to get the players working hard with and without the ball. They have resistance ropes and obstacles.
Three goals are set out in a line plus an unguarded tiny goal. Shots are fired at Foster and the other goalkeepers, Heurelho Gomes and Pontus Dahlberg. Elsewhere, in a sharp, short-sided game, 18-yearold Ben Wilmot catches the eye. Training ends after 93 minutes and the GPS vests worn by every player to track distance covered and speed are handed in.
In Watford’s gym, Jose Alfonso Morcillo, the head of performance, picks up a wristband and waves it in front of a “Smartcoach” ipad attached to a piece of gym equipment – a Versapulley.
It flashes up the data for Gerard Deulofeu, showing a series of
‘Everything is done with a purpose. The club are pushing us to get that edge. They are not waiting’
exercises tailored just for him. “It’s different data for different players,” Morcillo says. “We work their weakness points which are found in their daily assessments and also from their normal playing history. We are not comparing one player to another but comparing the same player.”
Before training there is “activation” for 30 minutes with individual exercises to get the players ready, before “compensatory work” for the same amount of time to prevent injury. It all churns out swathes of data.
Troy Deeney, the injured Watford captain, who is close to making his return, strides in and flicks on a boombox before completing a round of press-ups. A few feet away, Domingos Quina, a prodigiously talented 18-year-old Portuguese midfielder, juggles a large exercise ball. “For the injured player we get at the physios’ meeting, at 8.15am, what kind of work we have to do,” Morcillo says.
Other players drift towards the canteen. Foster and Adrian Mariappa are playing table tennis. Foster has even brought in his own graphite bat – these are competitive sportsmen, after all – and unwraps it with a grin. It is close to 3pm before the canteen clears, with Roberto Pereyra and Stefano Okaka the last to leave.
Gracia watches the pool before going to take part in an hour’s Q and A with a selection of young fans. “What would you have done if you had not become a football manager?” he is asked. “Work in tourism,” Gracia says.