“There are so many injuries because footballers play, they don’t train”

The teacher Carlos Alvarez del Villarwho is considered the pioneer of physical preparation in Spanish football, told EFE that he sees it as “necessary” for teams to dedicate the preseason to preparing their physical condition to compete, something that is currently not happening because “only” they play the ball, so “they lack a lot of muscular resistance, flexibility and coordination acquired in the preseason, and all this causes injuries and problems.”

In this sense, due to the many injuries suffered by football players immersed in a system saturated with competitive matches, he warned that since the preseason “there is no preparation” because “they do not train properly” but instead “play “, and these shortcomings. causing problems because the player “doesn’t have good control of his body.”

Now, he added that “there is no time to work properly” due to the fact of playing often, although the players “must get a good preparation first” which they cannot achieve because they start playing as soon as the preseason begins.

He does not agree with the theory that “all” the player’s preparation should be with the ball, because he warns that in some cases it will not happen, convinced of the impossibility of working on strength exercises with a ball that “doesn’t weigh anything. ” or improve maximum speed by controlling the ball at your feet.

Carlos Álvarez del Villar (October 6, 1931), who began his scientific foundation in physical preparation, first in athletics and later in football, in teams like Rayo Vallecano, or the Spanish team itself, is the author of two reference books : ‘Basic athletics: pedagogical orientation’ and ‘The physical preparation of football based on athletics’.

Athletics made him repeat two courses

He became involved in athletics during his university years as a law student, where he performed “divinely” until the third year, when he began to “spend more time on the track than in college,” amounting to two years to finish. his degree.

He took coaching courses because he liked athletics, and, arriving in Spain recently, he met the Italian Giovanni Battista Moba, who he said “practically took Spanish athletics from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages.”

The ‘guru’ was part of the first class of lNEF graduates, where he was joined by Juanjo Azpeitia, the technician with whom world long distance runner-up Yago Lamela jumped 8.56 meters, with whom he shared knowledge and, with jokes, both recreate jumps in the sand pit of the San Lárazo slopes in Oviedo.

Álvarez del Villar, called “teacher” by his disciples and colleagues, is known especially for his contributions to football. During the period in which he was a teacher at INEF and at the Soccer Coaches School, he met the Uruguayan coach Héctor Nuñez, who was then training in Valencia, who told him: “The day I went to a team in Madrid, you will come with me.” “It’s like that.”

When the Uruguayan signed for Rayo Vallecano, who played in the Second Division and “didn’t even have a field, because he played in the old Vallehermoso”, he called Álvarez del Villar: “I worked with him for three years, very good. because he let I developed everything I thought the team should do well, in the third year it was promoted to the First Division.

The key is that the training sessions are “more relevant to what an athlete has to do”, which according to his theory a footballer also needs. In his opinion, “if a soccer player runs, jumps and throws, and also needs to maintain his physical condition for 90 minutes, he needs to have as much or more preparation than an athlete,” because he has to master “his body. , the ball and at the same time.” contrary, which represents a triple problem”, which is why he needs to be “trained better”.

A footballer should train like a decathlete

For Álvarez del Villar, a footballer should always train like a decathlete, knowing the technique of ten tests. “With Héctor Núñez, it was very easy for me to do the things that I consider necessary for the preparation of footballers, which I did not pull out from under my sleeve, but as a result of the studies and the final degree project , which focuses on comparative analysis of running, jumping and throwing in athletics and soccer,” he revealed.

So, he applied his knowledge and experience, “knowing what is useful and what is not.” “We had pretty good results, we worked hard, I made the players work. We went to train at Casa de Campo, and at least once a week we toured the venue, which I called the Tour of France, inside for an hour and a half, with me always at the front, pulling the cart.

Among other anecdotes, he remembers when Alfredo Di Stéfano replaced Héctor Nuñez at the head of Rayo: “Di Stéfano came to run with us at Casa de Campo in the middle of the preseason; he thought it would be 10 minutes as it was done before . and he disappeared. When we left, we waited for him and he did not come, until he appeared in a police car, after he saw that he was lost, he said to us: ‘You want to kill me!’ the players had a great time.”

With the other coaches, he remembered, he had to hide and run away with the group he was training to do the planned workload, because they would immediately send the prop man to find him. Álvarez del Villar declared that the hard work he had put in “paid off”, and Rayo received the nickname “giant killers”, as “no important team” beat them at home.

“We were in the middle of the table, we lost a few games at the end, and the team probably has a certain workload,” he stressed while recalling some voices that suggested that Rayo was “burned out.”