Jose Mourinho explains what he wants to see in Roma’s Portuguese training camp and three friendly tests during their ‘unprecedented’ Serie A break for the World Cup in Qatar.
The Giallorossi are back in training and ready to fly out to Portugal for a series of friendly tests.
“I’m really happy with things. The players were keep to get down to work, and come back from the break full of motivation and focus,” Mou told Roma TV.
“That’s a huge plus. It’s never easy to come back to action, especially to hit the ground running in the way that we do and stick to our philosophy of applying intensity to our approach, as well as a high level of focus.
“I’m delighted with how the players have responded in the last three days.”
As the 2022 World Cup moves towards its conclusion, Serie A will be back on January 4 and Roma are heading to the Algarve for a warm weather training camp.
They will play three friendly games against Cadiz, Portuguese side Casa Pia and Dutch outfit RKC.
“There were so many teams over there, so there were many options available to us,” continued Mourinho when asked why he had organised those particular matches.
“That being said, it’s not easy to find the right opponents. The idea we had was to face teams who were in better shape than us. Cadiz haven’t had a break, they’ve been playing games and training throughout this period, facing big teams like Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers. They are in Southern Spain on the way to Portugal, you can see in their games they have been playing at full throttle.
“The Portuguese team are fifth in the league, but what’s more significant is that they were playing competitively only two days ago. While the league in Portugal took a break for the World Cup, the Portuguese League Cup continued and Casa Pia were involved in the group stage with three other teams. Games came thick and fast for them, so they’ve got an edge over us in terms of their competitive level right now.
“The Dutch side we are playing are back in league action earlier than we are, so that’s why we picked those opponents. We want the players to get some game time.
“After three days of training, in our first game back I’ll avoid giving players more than 45 or 60 minutes of action. Unfortunately, we don’t have 22 players available, so some of them will have to play more.
“What’s more important than getting a result, and obviously these games don’t count anyway, is to play, train well and recapture the intensity level. I think the players are in the right mindset to train well.”
This is an entirely new situation for so many players and coaches, taking a break of almost two months for the World Cup in club competition, while some of the star men continue to give their all in Qatar.
“Nobody has gone through this before,” noted Mourinho. “The situation is unprecedented. I think all of us involved in the game, coaches, staff and players, have tried to be as professional as possible, creating a plan which will see us go back into the season in good shape.”
The squad went on a tour of Japan in November, just after their final Serie A match of 2022, and again Mourinho did not disguise the reasons for it.
“Prior to this upcoming training camp in Portugal, the club of course with my consent had arranged a tour of Japan mainly for commercial and branding purposes. As we were going there right after the break, we tried to take some proper time off.”
Most of the Roma players who were in Qatar have already left, following the elimination of Portugal, Poland and Uruguay.
“We thought that as we had only four players going to the World Cup, we would’ve had some of them back already during this period, which is the case for Rui Patricio, who’ll join up with us in Portugal, while Matias Vina and Nicola Zalewski are back tomorrow. Paulo Dybala is the only one missing now.
“We had imagined this would happen. Now we are only missing injured players who are obviously still off the pace and won’t feature against Bologna on January 4.
“We saw this as an important period for us, we’re working our socks off right now. As I said, we use these games not to win, but rather as a training exercise. After a small break covering December 23-25, we’re back in action on 26 and we’ll be pushing forward with our preparations until January 4.
“Points will be at stake for that match, so we’ll be aiming to get a result there.”
Nothing like when you have a good plan towards keeping your players fit for the task ahead .Top four is possible.