The opening blog will be dedicated to the pre-season camps that all football clubs are organizing before the start of the season.

At this moment I am working in Kazakhstan. The championship is from March until November. That means that all teams in Kazakhstan are preparing in the months of December, January and February. These months most of the teams are traveling to a country with a better “football” climate. Some teams to the United Emirates (Abu Dhabi / Dubai) but most of the teams travel to Turkey. That means that some of the clubs are traveling multiple times during the beginning months of the season.

For Kazakhstan teams it is necessary because of the climate but equally important to find the right quality opponents.

The clubs are using for this travel agencies that are specialized in arranging training camps for football teams. They almost organize everything at the locations. The club (Head coach) only has to decide; what hotel, what time he wants to train and what kind of opponents he wants to play, the rest is done by the organization that is hired by the club.

When this all is decided and the coach does not have to think of this he can make his pre-season training plan. The preseason plan is important to decide when he wants to plan his training sessions, what kind of workload he is going to give to the players and on what day! Further the head coach is deciding when he would like to play a friendly match.

In my opinion it is always important to plan everything ahead and to be sure that the preparation of your players physically, the preparation of your team technically and tactically is well planned. When I am walking around as sport director during these camps; then I recognize that not all coaches are as detailed as they should be. Not all of them plan their sessions ahead of time but decide the day before what to do and continue like this until the end of their training camp. The pre-season is an important part of the player’s football education, his injury prevention as well as the mental feeling towards this new season.

The player wants to start the season in a good form and that he would like to keep until the end of the season. For the head coach there is a delicate issue and that is that he needs to implement new players in the team. Most likely he picked players with the football qualities that the team lacked of in the previous season. Also this takes time to make these players feel at home and to adept to the new demands in playing football.

So, you can say that the training camps are now a days an important part of the team development. A good training camp, well organized in all aspects of football, will give you a head start of the teams competing with you but also a good sports climate when you are aiming to have a successful season!

by Sportsdirector on 02/20/2015 in Blog, first team