Ruben Amorim is expected to usher in a new standard of physical fitness at Manchester United through the use of “skin fold tests” which estimate a player’s body-fat percentage, a former coach at Sporting Lisbon reveals.
“When we were together at Sporting, I would tell Ruben that a certain player had too many skin folds,” the coach reveals in an interview with Pete Hall (inews).
“If he had what we agreed were too many, that player would not play for two weeks, until they got their fitness back up.”
Often in recent years at Old Trafford, the squad have been excused of poor discipline or a lack of application.
United’s inability to handle the increasingly physical demands of Premier League football have been largely driven by poor recruitment choices. But there is also a lack of fitness and physical preparedness underpinning some members of the dressing room.
Hall contends substandard fitness will not be tolerated during Amorim’s reign given “pressing from the front, as a unit, at an elevated level of intensity is integral to the [39-year-old coach’s] modus operandi.”
If a player falls foul of being judged too ‘fat’, they will be forced to train harder to be judged ‘fit’, Amorim’s former coach reveals.
“It is not punishment, banning players with too many skin folds,” the Sporting coach states. “It is about getting standards across, to young players learning what it takes, and older ones who may have forgotten. It is one of many ways we found that extra level.”
“It’s not technical or tactical,” he adds. “But being so obsessed with players being at their optimal fitness levels is something that helps you discover who has the desire and character to succeed. You have to want it to get there [the top].
“It is not something people see, but does not make it less important.”
The early impressions from Amorim’s tenure at Old Trafford appear to centre around work rate and physicality. The Portuguese manager is likely to be confident in his ability to coach a squad with as much talent as United’s into playing his novel 3-4-3 system effectively.
What he cannot do, however, is make the squad magically fit if fitness is not already there. And the only way to play Amorim’s aggressive and fast style of proactive football is to be fit, not fat; if you fall foul of this precept, you won’t play at all.
Featured image Alex Livesey via Getty Images
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Darragh Fox
Darragh is a writer for The Peoples Person who spent three years as a history graduate slowly realising football was by far the most interesting thing to write about.
