Pintus is scared

“Reed, reed and reed!” The words echoed through the stage of preseason that Real Madrid began in the facilities that the University of California, UCLA, owns in Los Angeles. There, Antonio Pintus (Turin, September 26, 1962) designed circuits of physical exercises that exhausted all the members of the white squad, Including Zidane, which included continuous running routes, exercises such as sit-ups, planks, stretching … It was the summer of 2017 and the players displaced to the city of Los Angeles couldn't wait to finish the first training sessions. In those first weeks, Pintus hung up the label that some footballers had put on him the previous season, that of his arrival in the Madrid capital: The iron sergeant (others nicknamed him Mister Proper for his baldness and physical condition)

Antonio Pintus had reached an agreement to be the physical trainer of Olympique de Lyon, when Zinedine Zidane, who coincided with him in the ranks of Juventus, claimed him. The good physical condition with which the campaign ended made the French coach give him all the power in the physical aspect. His second campaign ended with a resounding success: the whites won the League and the Champions League, this one against Juventus in such a display of physical power, that at the end of the match, when King Juan Carlos entered the locker room, after greeting the players and Zidane, his first words were towards his Italian compatriot: “Where is he? Pintus? ” Zizou was in charge of calling him: “They have improved a lot,” he said, in his presence.

And it is true that the presence of Pintus imposes. His announcement as “head of the physical preparation of the first team and responsible for the physical preparation methodology of all the club's football teams”, according to the official statement of the white team, has made all the players get down to business before the start of the preseason. Footballers like Marcelo, Isco, Lucas Vázquez and Lunin, among others, have already started training on their own during their summer vacations. It is not uncommon for players to upload their workouts to their social networks: whether they are running (either in the open air, or on machines) or doing exercises. No one wants to suffer the famous shoelaces in these first days of training. But beyond the wear and tear typical of the start of the season, there is a simple explanation: the last three Champions of Champions (Liverpool, Bayern and Chelsea, in that order) were superior to their rivals in the physical aspect. The elimination of whites at the hands of Londoners, above all, the superiority shown in that section, He has made the white board put the squad under the orders of the Italian.

The method of Pintus (a shy person always willing to appear in the background) is simple: his motto is “The one who runs faster will be better”. His training weeks call for workouts with little ball work. That work increases both in load volume and intensity as the weekend approaches (the date of the game). This year, Madrid have suffered more than 60 muscle injuries, something that the Madrid leadership wants to nip in the bud. When Zidane took over the first team, the whites had suffered up to 26 muscle injuries in just five months of competition (it was adduced to the preseason held in Australia that summer of 2015 with rain, cold, etc etc). Under Pintus' leadership, that number dropped. His methodology is that each player must know what his sacrifice point is in order to then be able to exploit it in matches. And veterans know it. Virtually everyone has been exercising on vacation. They don't want him Pintus train roll them over.