La Roja's first group training session in a week

Luis Enrique today led the first training session to the whole group after a week. Since Sergio Busquets tested positive for COVID last Sunday night, the National Team players have trained individually, following the protocol established by the medical services to take extreme measures to prevent contagion. The training started at 18:30 and concluded at 20:35

The 22 players on the list of 24, with the casualties of Busquets and Diego Llorente, have been exercising in three shifts from Monday to Friday, when the coach gave them a rest in the afternoon. And today Thursday, 48 hours before the first game against Sweden, is the first time that the Spanish have been able to train all together since last Saturday. And they will have a second session tomorrow, Sunday, before traveling to Seville where they will spend the night before the match that takes place at the La Cartuja Stadium in Seville.

Luis Enrique explained in his press appearance on Thursday how the work dynamics had been without being able to work with the group, both in the parallel bubble of the 17 meritorious and for those on the official list: “We have done four sessions: first thing the U-21s and the six seniors, and then three different sessions at 18:45, 19:15 and 19:45 hours. We have done it at the warmest hours here to acclimatize to the heat of Seville ”.

The coach played down the importance of not having been able to work on collective tactical situations during this week because he considers that the players have their game system very assimilated. Even so, in individual sessions and in groups of four, he gave blackboard talks. Luis Enrique gives information to the players so that they remember them, but he does not saturate the footballer with many concepts.

Today the session was scheduled at 6:00 p.m. and has been delayed for half an hour because the temperature was expected to increase further and the coach, as he publicly explained, seeks the maximum adaptation to the Sevillian heat. The first two games, against Sweden and Poland, are played at 9:00 p.m., and the third, against Slovakia, is played at 6:00 p.m. The session was longer than usual and lasted for two hours. He started with two rounds, I continue with exercises in confined spaces, then the coaching staff prepared full structure tasks, in which they worked on various aspects of the game with the entire block.

Since the training session started at 6:30 p.m., the internationals did not find out about the mishap of the Danish international Christian Eriksen during the game against Finland until the end of training, as the blackout occurred around a quarter to seven. When the session ended, it was when they found out what happened and arrived at the residence to watch the second half of Denmark-Filandia when the match was resumed.