An insight into pre-season training camps with Leicester City

A fascinating description of what it is like being a Leicester City player during the Premier League off-season, courtesy of former-Fox Tony Cottee.

Although Leicester City supporters are still weeks away from the wonderful opening day of the beloved Premier League, June 13 finally felt like it would all be real once more. I know, it’s only been a month.

That’s when the fixture list was released. We saw Aston Villa back again and the Foxes will take on Wolverhampton Wanderers in a Midlands triangle. How we are longing to see that drama play out.

First of all it’s pre-season training for the squad, well, all squads. Yes, the dreaded distance running, conditioning and exhausting gym work.

Historical Leicester City pre-season

On Leicester City’s official website, lcfc.com, is thorough insight into this schedule and its impact from former-Fox Tony Cottee. Cottee was a Leicester player during the club’s second most successful era, the Martin O’Neill years:

"“It’s so hard to compare pre-season nowadays because when I first started, it was a completely different scenario,” the 53-year-old Sky Sports pundit says.will certainly be seeing a ball a lot earlier than what we did and pre-season, quite rightly, is dedicated to what you do in the matches.“In other words, you don’t run in a forest for 10 miles! Football’s not like that, you’re not running up and down hills, and you’re not running at the same pace.“Football is very explosive, so you need to do little shuttle runs and you need to do some work to get your touch back after a few weeks away.”"

More from Foxes of Leicester

The ex-West Ham United striker continues:

"“It’s always nice as a player when you’ve had your rest to get back in, see your mates again, get to meet the new players, and there was always a buzz around a club on that day.“I always looked forward to getting back. You enjoy your holiday because it’s important for a football player to rest, but when you’re back, it’s an exciting time.“Pre-season is hard and everyone thinks being a footballer is easy… it’s not, it’s a very hard profession and you always need to work hard on your fitness.“We went to Ireland a few times at Leicester, but Martin didn’t really like going away in pre-season.“He’d be more likely to take us away in the middle of the season. Martin was a lot more interested in playing against local teams and there was a lot of common sense in that.“You can often get a better work-out against a local side in the Championship or League 1 than you’d get against a team from the opposite side of the world.“I had a mixed bag at Leicester under the great Martin O’Neill where we used to go up in the forests… we used to run around Bradgate Park which, again, wasn’t enjoyable!”"

All we have to add, is players are in such excellent shape that they probably endure less stress than Cottee’s generation. Though they were also very fit – now it is a stringently high level of fitness. Yet there are exceptions like Ben Chilwell, whose personal exercise regime saw him become an England regular.

Info and team

For preparation of the 2019/20 campaign, Leicester City’s managerial team includes manager Brendan Rodgers, assistant manager Chris Davies, first team coach Kolo Toure and first team fitness coach Glen Driscoll.

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Dates of interest:

July 1: Players return to club

July 16: Friendly Vs Scunthorpe

July 20: Friendly Vs Cheltenham

July 23 Friendly Vs Cambridge United

July 27: Friendly Vs Stoke City/Rotherham

August 2: Friendly Vs Atalanta (Italian)

August 8: Transfer Window ends

August 11: Premier League opener Vs Wolves