BARCELONA
Setién making Barcelona players watch football during lockdown
The technical staff at Barcelona are pushing players to stay connected to football by watching recent games and to forget about the difficulty of living in lockdown.
Quique Setién is taking advantage of the video calls with his players to remind them to watch games as a way to disconnect from confinement and to internalise their understanding. In fact, between the physical training that they have to do, he has added watching games to their list of things to do.
The reasons are three-fold: firstly, it serves a mental note to them to they can reproduce the same movement they see on the telly. Secondly, they can extrapolate what happens in 10 and 20 seconds of action so they can read the game better and finally, it serves as disconnection from the difficult situation they find themselves in along with the rest of Spain.
Barcelona trying to make life easier for players during lockdown
One aspect of confinement is working out in an effort not to lose physical fitness. But they have also integrated psychological help for the players and part of their efforts to keep players connected to each other is the conference calls with the manager. They have been done it in the form of groups and with Setien and his coaching staff.
For many footballers, it's not much of an ask to get to them to watch previous games given their drive to get better. An example of that is Frenkie de Jong, who is very self-critical and watches a lot of games in order to improve. Some players, however, need to be pushed to watch games and to remain connected to football.
Currently, Barcelona footballers are doing four sessions a week divided into 20 minutes of cardio work, more than half an hour of strength work and the last part is work with the ball so they don't lose the feeling of having the ball at their feet.