The situation
“At the top, the Pintus method!” . Luka Modric hugged and pointed to his physical trainer after going back to City. The reel of the Croatian, who turns 37 in September, seems eternal. Also that of a Benzema who shows that the 30 – the 34 in his case – are the new 20 in football and points to the Ballon d’Or. However, without ‘the sergeant’, without Antonio Pintus, perhaps the tank would not have had so much gasoline at the end of a season full of challenges like Madrid’s last year . A triplet (Super Cup, League and Champions) based on impossible comebacks and an enviable physical condition, regardless of the footballer’s age. Pintus returned in 2021 with a mission, to bury the ghost of the more than 60 injuries of the previous year . Not only has he achieved it, but Ancelotti’s men have been kings of the twilight of matches. No one in the five major leagues has scored more goals (23 to City’s 22 and Liverpool’s 21) than the Whites in the final quarter hour : 25 of 80, 31 percent. In Champions, that final opportunism has multiplied: 11 goals out of a total of 29 have come from the 75th minute. 34.45 percent if we extend the range of study to all competitions.It has been, especially the Champions League, a season full of epic and inexplicable feats (PSG, Chelsea, City, Seville in the League…). But the epic is worked and in that the Turinese has been key. It was a club move, a Real Madrid that decided to bring back last summer the ‘whip’, as they know him in Italy, the physical trainer of Zidane’s first stage on the bench. They have not been slow to get a return on the bet.
The protagonist explains
It all started again in the preseason last year, where he laid the foundations for the team’s fantastic start: five victories in the first six league games that cemented the final victory . Despite Ancelotti not having rotated too much, the age of some key components and a bump at the beginning of 2022 (between January and February), Madrid finished the course like a motorcycle. “The fault, first, is the players (…). They have the capacity to withstand the very hard work that we frequently subject them to, to all the cane we give them” , explained a Pintus who was not too much of a fan of appearing in the media on Real Madrid TV .. The preseason work was “very hard”, “intense and long”, he added. A sample of what awaits Ancelotti’s men from July 8. Most already know the method, Rüdiger and Tchouameni will test for the first time those continuous races led by Turin, who is not losing bottom at 59 years old. “The physical data, with the tests we did, show us that the team is doing very well at an aerobic level. In this final stretch, the most important thing is to work on small things individually to put the boys on top until the end”. This is how the small coach completed his intervention, who was “very optimistic” for the end of the course. He was right with that hopeful speech. And it is that these words arrived in April. Shortly after, that hug at the beginning, in which Modric made him the protagonist of the successes. The challenge this season will be even greater , since the World Cup halfway through (starts on November 21), where more than half of the team’s squad will presumably be present, adds difficulty to the preparation…