Liverpool legend, Steve Nicol, has told Tottenham Hotspur manager, Antonio Conte, that he is ‘killing his players’ after details of their brutal preseason training regime were revealed on Monday.
Tottenham are currently on their preseason tour in South Korea and Conte, who is renowned for his rigorous training and fitness methods, has been putting his players through hard training.
Conte’s system of preseason training sent confusion in the Tottenham team during an open training at the Seoul World Cup Stadium on Monday, as Harry Kane was caught vomiting while Son Heung-min collapsed on the pitch.
Many other Tottenham players collapsed on the grass after they were made to run 42 pitch lengths in 30 degrees of heat after their third training session in 24 hours.
These scenes have divided opinion, with Nicol insisting that it was madness.
“This is madness! Brain damage that is what they are going to get out of this,” Nicol told ESPN.
“There is one thing to get your players fit, but there is another thing to try and break them because that seems to me what is happening here. I never have understood this, this completely annihilates players.
“There has to be a little bit of heart and soul involved and hard work, but to me, this just looks like running the guts out of people for the sake of it.”
He added, “I would be talking to the manager saying, “I want to know how this is good for me. You’re running the guts out of me to the point where I’m lying on the ground, maybe spewing my ring up and I feel as though I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.”
“I remember running the length of the field and I can assure you never once did we run it 42 times and we didn’t do too bad, by the way. We won the European Cup, First Division and all the other cups.
“I guess there’s a different way of doing it, but I don’t agree with it. I don’t see the point of killing your players.”
