Quotes About Pre-season

When we get there, Coach Byrnes gives us a pre-season pep talk. He carries around this clipboard and whistle and talks really, really fast. "Passtheballovertherenowturnaroundandkickitintothegoalrightnow!" Sometimes I have no idea what he's talking about. I thought I knew everything there was to know about soccer. Boy, was I wrong.

Jerome Boateng spoke pre-season after the World Cup in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and described how Guardiola told him in every training session exactly what he had to do in different defensive situations.

The coach sat down with president Laporta, Beguiristain and Estiarte in the suite of the hotel in which the team were staying in the United States for a pre-season tour. He explained that if the club could ignore the ruling and let Messi go to the Olympics, the long-term gain outweighed the short-term loss: it would allow him to get the best out of Messi.

Some things that started in pre-season and then, you know what, the season gets started, you kind of forget about it and then move on to football, and it's strictly football until the season finishes.

You need good fitness from the players and the organisational structure has to be there from early on in pre-season because the games come so quickly that you don't have much time on the grass with the players to shuffle the pack tactically.

I've definitely got better over the years at conserving my energy in pre-season - at knowing what to focus on and what to let go.

The main aim of pre-season is to get ready for the competitive games and go into those in the best possible fashion on group and individual levels.