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The 18 hour day
When we are away at a tournament I might wake anytime between 5-5.30am. If I am awake I might watch footage from one of the games and after that I might go for a run. A lot of our staff exercise early in the morning as it is the time they get to themselves before the players wake up. So there’s always a cycling group and a running group each morning. Exercising early in the day is crucial as it is a series of meetings, decisions and discussions for the rest of the day.
The working day regularly goes from 6 in the morning all the way through to 11/11.30 in the evening when we might still be looking at set-pieces, planning training or discussing team selection or tactics. Bar pausing for training or meals, there’s something on the go all the time.
"The day can
go from 6 in the morning all the way through to 11/11.30pm"
The schedule
At the Toulon tournament in May the fixture schedule dictated that we were always a day before or a day after a game. That meant each morning was set aside for recovery with our main training session set for 4pm. Team meetings would take place around the practical activity – a part of the programme we tried to keep fresh and varied, sometimes including video analysis but sometimes based around an informal chat.
In addition to team meetings with the players there are daily meetings with the medical staff, video analyst and the other coaching staff.
Through discussions with the video analyst we would clarify the content of forthcoming team meetings including the messages we wanted to debrief from our previous game, the opposition footage we wanted to show ahead of our next game and also how all the parts would fit together to inform our training.
The content of training would be decided in daily meetings with Steve Holland [U21 assistant coach], Martin Thomas [GK coach] and John Iga [Sports Scientist] with a focus on how each area fits together for the players benefit.
Finally, there are daily media duties and press conferences and also calls to make to senior figures at The FA as well as calls to the other national coaching staff at different events.
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