Giovanni Mauri trained the Croatian champion for five years at Ancelotti’s Real Madrid: “We called him ‘the professor'”
The questions are lawful. “How do you manage a forty year old?”. And again “Modric how many games do you have in the legs?”. Difficult to say. Those who know and trained it, however, have a little clearer ideas. The goal is to make a sample adapt to a different championship. His career is a gallery of great games, of crazy stories – 15 years at Real Madrid – of shared triumphs (6 Champions League, just to give an example) and personal catwalks, such as the conquest of the Golden Ball. But one like this, who plays with his head before even with his feet, who ‘thinks football’ as they say in jargon, is still able to give a lot. “He has very high parameters. Physically he seems to be ten years old.”
The professor
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The story is entrusted to Giovanni Mauri, an athletic trainer for a life alongside Ancelotti. Parma, Milan, Chelsea, PSG, Real, Bayern: they were together from 1996 to 1998 and then from 2001 to 2017. Real was the meeting point with the Croatian champion, who Mauri had for five years. As soon as you talk to him, one slide takes out after another, in sequence. “In the locker room we called him ‘the professor’. It was, in fact, the first of the class. A leader in all respects. And how he ran …”. Then the gaze turns to the present. “He is no longer a boy, he will be managed. We will have to safeguard his strength, to run less. But trust you, he will also be surprised. He is also one who puts himself in his head a goal reaches him”.
Thirty games
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So let’s try to answer the initial question: how do you manage a forty year old? Mauri has no doubts. “I also managed Maldini’s fine career, he too went to forty. Football is a usary sport, he is lost, he played a lot. Maybe too much. Maybe too much. For Modric certainly not having cups it will be a factor. If he asks me, however, I tell me that he has at least thirty games in his legs, if he is well perhaps more”. Then the management. “It must be personalized. I don’t have to teach the trade to anyone, but I would manage it like this. Ad hoc works, less strength and so much intensity more than work volumes”.
Goals
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The goal will therefore be to make it make it best, without squeezing it. “It will be necessary to focus on the well -being of the athlete.” Then he will think about making the ball run. But this has realized this. In history there are many champions who went from Milan – even in old age – and who then made good. “They will individualize the work. Allegri knows how the great players are managed, he will also be able to do it with Luka.”
Second half
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Mauri had Modric from 27 to 33 years old, therefore in the middle of his career. “He knows what the midfield of Real made spectacular? Athleticism. They were spatial. Both Luka and Kross, Casemiro and so on. I have followed it in recent years and I have seen that in the second times it makes it better, it is more dynamic and more lucid”. Before saying goodbye, Giovanni pulls out a couple of postcards on Milan, a group with which he won everything from 2001 to 2009. “After a couple of years they went alone. He was a locker room in which the boys stimulated each other and everyone had a quality in which he stood out. Shevchenko was a car, Inzaghi had a unique resistance. And then Maldini, Pirlo and all the other. With pleasure it is Lampard, moved the balance and changed completely when there was or not.
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