MAURICIO POCHETTINO’S gruelling training sessions left one former Premier League star on the verge of tears.
The ex-Tottenham Hotspur manager will officially become the new Chelsea boss on July 1.
He is then expected to put his players through an intense two-week training camp ahead of their pre-season tour of the USA.
The camp will likely include Pochettino’s brutal “Gacon test”, an exercise consisting of intermittent shuttle runs.
His Spurs side were transformed using the test, ranking second in the Premier League for running four years in a row.
Explaining the training drill in his book, Brave New World, he said: “To start with, the players have 45 seconds to cover 150 metres, with a 15 seconds rest.
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“In each subsequent 45-second rep, they have to run 6.25 metres further, with the intensity steadily increasing.”
Pochettino’s methods may come as a shock to the Chelsea squad, as it did to Rickie Lambert at Southampton.
The Saints players struggled to adapt to Pochettino’s sessions following his arrival in 2013, to the point where Lambert was asked to speak to the manager.
He felt his conversation with the Argentinian had gone well after requesting Pochettino went easy on the players, only to later realise the opposite.
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Recalling what happened next, Lambert told talkSPORT: “I went out [of the office] and went back to the lads made up, thinking, ‘yep, just done it for you boys, next Monday gonna be sorted’.
“So, I played the game, 90 minutes again, come in Monday, not only did we do 12, we did 24 runs – 24 runs and I just knew, I was running around laughing and almost crying and I knew what he was doing, he was breaking me and he did, he broke me.”
Chelsea players can expect the same intensity in training before they jet off to the USA for five friendly matches, starting on July 20.
The Blues will take on Wrexham, Brighton & Hove Albion, Newcastle United, Fulham and Borussia Dortmund before returning to England.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
