Gian Piero Ventrone’s final interview emerges – Spurs training, Son and Kane

Tottenham Hotspur were rocked this week by the tragic news that fitness coach Gian Piero Ventrone had passed away. Now, a new interview with Ventrone has emerged giving an insight into training sessions at the club.

Ventrone, a long-time collaborator of Antonio Conte, arrived at Tottenham in November 2021 when Conte was installed as Spurs boss. The pair had worked together at Juventus previously when Conte was a player.

The club announced Ventrone’s passing on Thursday, and tributes have been pouring in from those associated with Spurs, and from the wider footballing world, ever since.

Ventrone was clearly a well-respected and much-loved member of the Tottenham backroom staff. The coach had been instrumental in improving the fitness levels of the players at the club since his arrival.

Tottenham’s pre-season tour of South Korea was reportedly a gruelling yet fruitful experience for the players (Sun), and Ventrone was at the heart of that fitness regime.

Speaking to Gazzetta dello Sport just last week, Ventrone offered some details about the way he trains the players at Spurs.

He said: “The training sessions? At Tottenham, they are carried out at match pace. Our sessions are very long: an hour and a half, almost two, instead of the usual 50 minutes.

“Conte has developed a culture and work methodology that does not differ from mine, based on the athlete’s adaptability to suffering, on his ability not to give up easily to fatigue.

“For Conte, this philosophy has become a sort of gospel. In the last year and a half we have had very few problems with muscle overload.

When comparing the Premier League to Serie A, Ventrone said: “The difference is that in the Premier League, in training as in a match, recovery times are shorter.

“In short, the game is interrupted less. But the main problem, and which largely explains the injuries, is that you play a lot.”

“The truth is that we are moving towards individual work, based on parameters that respect the biotype and the background of the player. Team work will lose more and more meaning.

“A fast player must be trained in one way; a slow player, in another. The same menu for all, taking one repetition off one and adding it to another, takes us off the right track.

“At Tottenham, Son and Kane are two completely different machines. Son has big quadriceps of course: it is useless to develop them again. His best quality, from an athletic point of view, is speed: that must be maintained and if possible increased, combining it with resistance. In his case, too, the important thing is to enhance the balance, rather than the strength, of his machine.”

Spurs Web Opinion

A fascinating insight into the work and the mind of a great coach. Gian Piero Ventrone will be sorely missed at Spurs and in the footballing world. It’s clear to see the incredible impact he had on the Tottenham players in such a short space of time, not just as a professional, but as a person too.

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