Let’s be footballers first, athletes next
IN my playing days I was always lucky enough to be a naturally fit guy but like nearly all players I hated pre-season training.
In fact, I pretty much disliked most type of fitness training especially if it involved running long distances.
I could never get my head around running up and down the terraces, especially when I was active all the way through the summer anyway.
I had a reputation for not being a great trainer and I will admit there may be something in that.
But I always kept myself in decent shape in the summer breaks and didn’t feel the need for 10-mile road runs that were a feature of pre-season back in those days.
The short-running stuff was fine – I would have backed myself against Usain Bolt over the first 10 yards of a sprint in my prime.
During those long summer holidays there were no trips to America, the Far East, or New Zealand. We had an end-ofseason trip to Belgium or Holland and that was it.
Me and a few of the Chelsea lads back in the mid-to-late ’50s would play in cricket testimonials in Surrey in the close season. We would turn out with greats like the Bedser twins, Jim Laker, Peter May and Tony Lock and I would play tennis three times a week, too.
So by the time I got back to football I hadn’t piled on the pounds and was almost as fit as when the season finished.
Unlike my Chelsea captain Peter Sillett, who used to come in the first day back and to our amusement had to wear a plastic sweatsuit to get rid of the halfstone he had put on.
Or, when I was at Tottenham, Bobby Smith, who had to go through the same sauna-style routine to shed the summer spread.
I was always baffled by players coming back overweight and unfit after six weeks off. I could not comprehend how they could lose their fitness in just a few weeks.
So I was utterly amazed to hear that Louis van Gaal had declared his £28million new signing Luke Shaw unfit for duty on Manchester United’s USA tour and put him on a special fitness programme.
This was a player who was at the World Cup with England until late June, so to be declared seriously out of shape about four weeks later seems astonishing.
I know fitness today is a different concept than it was in my time but in those days we were footballers first and we learned how to become athletes. These days the criteria for being a top-class player seems to be that you have to be an athlete first – being able to actually kick a ball comes a definite second.
The scientific side of the game has taken over and I am not sure it is for the better.
Not if I judge what I saw during the World Cup where the basics – controlling and passing the ball – seemed to have passed some England players by.
They are fit alright – maybe Luke Shaw apart according to Van Gaal – but I’m not totally sure they are better players with the ball.
I do remember one pre-season that did me some good, though, after I’d left Chelsea for AC Milan.
Not many people know but before I went out to Italy I rang up Ron Greenwood at West Ham and asked him if I could join their preseason because Milan started a couple of weeks later.
He kindly obliged and although I was always lagging at the back in the running I wasn’t the worst. There was one player who was always at the very back – Bobby Moore.
And he certainly knew how to play.
I was always lagging at the back in training but I wasn’t the worst – that was Bobby Moore