WARSAW, Poland — For “winning” clubs, preseasons have always centered around hunger. One way or the other.
Once, they were about working off the damage that hunger can do when players let loose and spend the summer gorging on beer, desserts and crisps. Put bluntly, very many footballers returned from summer break several pounds heavier and out of shape. More about that in a moment.
Real Madrid are the perfect example of how hunger — in its most driven, fanatical form — will be key to them winning some or all of the (record-breaking) seven trophies available to them during what could be a 334-day season ahead that begins in Warsaw against Europa League winners Atalanta on Wednesday in the UEFA Super Cup and may not end until the Club World Cup final on July 13, 2025.
The biggest, most important teams will always be stuffed full of talent. That’s not in question. However, their best footballers are having more and more squeezed out of them, given ever-decreasing time to intensely train.
Thus, the players union FIFPRO is suing FIFA for what they claim is breach of “fundamental rights,” meaning the ability to enjoy a humane amount of rest between matches and between seasons.
Notwithstanding all the ability, professionalism, commitment and good coaching at elite clubs, the vital factor is that their dominant footballers are driven not by salaries, nor even personal pride, but by sheer, unquenchable hunger to compete, to win and to lift trophies. And to do it repeatedly.
Given how different this modern age is, maybe you thought I was joking about the state even great players used to get themselves into when summer came around.
Preseason was, effectively, hell on earth and principally designed for footballers to shed weight. They sweated, sometimes wearing bin bags under their training kit in order to multiply the fluid loss. They ran and ran until their legs felt like falling off, barely kicked a football and were weighed relentlessly.
That was when preseason lasted an eternity, though.
Roy Keane recently told an anecdote about Steve McClaren ringing him after two days of Manchester United’s summer training to express concern about the Irishman’s performance. Keane reminded Sir Alex Ferguson’s assistant that there were “four or five weeks” to get things right and that he needed to stop panicking.
The sentiment seems about a century old but it was really only a couple of decades ago. These days, elite players often preseason for a week, then they’re expected to play flat out. Injuries? Don’t even mention them.
Ronaldinho, not long after winning the Ballon d’Or, all but ended his Barcelona career with his weight gain. Ronaldo Nazário (and that’s two of the greatest footballers of all time I’ve highlighted) was several kilos too heavy when he was starring for Real Madrid. As for Eden Hazard’s physique when he turned up for training with Los Blancos in summer 2019, the less said the better.
Last week in Charlotte, after his team beat Chelsea, Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti revealed: “The players who came on tour are now in good shape, let’s see what state the last few guys are in. They’ve been working at home during the break, hopefully they’ll be in good condition when we finally train as a full squad. If not, no problem — they’ll all be benched!”
Said with a twinkle in the eye, typical Ancelotti. But don’t you dare doubt how serious he was.
Now Dani Carvajal, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Eduardo Camavinga, Ferland Mendy, Jude Bellingham and Federico Valverde (the guys in question) are so admirably lean, fit and hungry that they’ll play their first competitive match of the season, for a trophy Madrid are properly committed to winning, after more or less one week’s training. It’s incredible.
Just as much as the elimination of the backpass rule, or the introduction of VAR, the rapid evolution of summer football training from a purgatory for the podgy to a parade of the perma-fit has been utterly revolutionary. Whatever scrutiny Kylian Mbappé is under when he pulls on Los Blancos‘ famous shirt for the first time against Atalanta, his physical silhouette and how snug those shorts are won’t be part of it.
He was a toddler when Ronaldo was stretching out his shirt at Madrid, and his idol has always been Zinedine Zidane (who took himself to a clinic in the Dolomite mountains in summer in order to ensure he was super lean for Madrid’s preseason training). The 25-year-old France striker is a standard-bearer for this relatively new perma-fit generation.
He’s at the Bernabeu to make it his footballing Garden of Eden, not to replicate the silhouette of Eden Hazard. Not that anyone should doubt Mbappé’s hunger. He wants to “eat the world,” as they say in Spanish about the ambitious ones, not eat the dessert cart.
What might be of some concern is that he was beginning to look like someone jaded by football’s voracious demands and even more from its key resource: talented, creative, imaginative players.
Look back at Paris Saint-Germain’s two Champions League semifinal matches against Borussia Dortmund in May — a rival the French champions vastly outmuscled in terms of pure talent. Mbappé was markedly disconnected, his normally fleet feet more Fred Flintstone than Fred Astaire.
That’s not a criticism; no one can question his willingness to keep putting himself on the line. For someone who’s closing in on 500 senior games still aged 25, his résumé says it all: perpetually available, always hungry to play, score, compete and win.
But when he received yet another award having just turned 23, he had the foresight to warn: “We like to play but it’s too much. If people want to see the quality, we have to take a break.”
I was at Mbappé’s final game of last season, the Euro 2024 semifinal against Spain in Munich.
He and France were two steps away from winning the European Championship, and Madrid’s newest Galactico set up Les Bleus’ first goal. After which, again, he was a bit listless; determinedly reaching for top gear but failing to connect with fourth let alone fifth.
I think the French have a word for it: knackered.
After the quarterfinals, France coach Didier Deschamps admitted that Mbappé actually asked to be taken off. A career first.
“Kylian’s always very honest with me when he doesn’t have the capacity to accelerate,” Deschamps said. “He’s not at his top form … he felt very tired indeed. It was pointless to leave him on.”
That defeat to Spain was only the blink of an eye ago. He’s had approximately three stress-free weeks before reporting for training. That’s insufficient, at least if we want to now see year-long quality.
What Madrid are going to discover is that they owe a debt of gratitude to their ex-midfielder, Luis Enrique — a persona non grata at the Bernabeu since leaving for Barcelona on a free transfer in 1996. The now-PSG coach spent time last season undertaking one-on-one video sessions with Mbappé showing his deficiencies in pressing, detailing the need to help out his full-back, and educating the striker about how those deficiencies damaged the team and match strategy.
Mbappé is bright, dedicated to improving; those aren’t lessons he’ll discard along with his blue-and-red shirt now that he’s finally left Paris.
When I spent 40 days with Spain during the summer, coach Luis de la Fuente described one of his touchstone footballers, Mbappé’s new Madrid teammate Carvajal, as a “spartan.” He said, “Dani doesn’t stop because he’s insatiable, he’s a born competitor. He’s a Spartan, someone prepared for the fight, for the work, for the effort.”
That’s what Mbappé has joined. That’s Madrid. He’ll adapt, he’ll learn. But he’ll need to add that last element of tungsten toughness to his mentality: team and club first, always. Personal glory a distant second plus a total embracing of the all-for-one-one-for-all mentality.
That is a level above where he’s been so far. Once that happens, what an asset he will be.
This first trophy, I figure, will be won. Madrid are simply better at getting across the line when they’re not fully in shape than Atalanta will be. Best guess.
Then comes a brutal nearly full-year assault course (not mentioning national team duties) for Madrid’s squad. Is it genuinely feasible for them to win all seven trophies? Wouldn’t winning the big three — LaLiga, Champions League and Club World Cup — be sufficient?
The losses of veterans Toni Kroos and Nacho will be felt, but youngsters will step forward, and most fundamental attitudes won’t change one millimetre. I think Madrid will win LaLiga. I think they’re in shape to win the Champions League, perhaps most of all because of their hunger, not just because they remain absolutely jam-packed with footballers of the most divine ability.
