Mourinho’s former assistant gives insight into how Spurs boss sets up training sessions

Jose Mourinho’s former assistant Aitor Karanka has now spoken out on just how meticulousness and detail-oriented the Special One’s training sessions are.

Karanka served as Mourinho’s assistant during his time at Real Madrid and followed the Portuguese coach out the door in 2013.

The Spaniard was appointed as the manager of Middlesbrough later that year and had a successful spell at the Riverside Stadium guiding the club back to the top flight in 2016.

He then parted ways with the English club during the next season after struggling to keep them in the Premier League.

Karanka also enjoyed a brief spell at Nottingham Forest after being appointed by the club in January 2018. The former Real Madrid assistant has been without work since his Forest stint.

He has now revealed that Jose Mourinho likes to plan out every single detail of his training sessions beforehand.

Speaking to The Coach’s Voice about how Jose set up his training sessions at Madrid, Karanka said (as relayed by Football.London): “Every single training session was prepared to find the thing that we were going to work on in the game the following week.

“The way that he prepared the games in both areas, in the meeting room with the videos, individual reports and everything, then on the pitch preparing those sessions to play those games.

“So every single session was different, every single session was always with the ball.

“It was always in groups so really, really detailed sessions, not just on the pitch, but also in the meeting room with the players.”

Spurs Web Opinion

Jose is known to be a fan of tactical periodisation and it is not surprising that he prefers for his players to work with the ball than without it. The essence of periodisation is to help players combine the physical, technical, and tactical aspects of training by giving them real match scenarios to solve during training. Although the Spurs boss was an early adopter of the method, it is fair to say that it is well subscribed among most top teams in the Premier League at the moment.

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