Today we are returning from the camp! While the national team played with Estonia, we spent a week in Slovenia. Of course, I didn’t want to leave home, but what to do - we are not the only ones. Lokomotiv, there, trained in Germany. True, unlike us, he has a base. But on it, apparently, there are no suitable fields.
Over my career, I’m already tired of training camps. Especially since: first you spent two months in the offseason, and then after the start of the championship you will be thrown there for a week. If we assume that the fees last two months of the year, and multiply them by 16 years of career, you get 32 months. Considering that I had to sit at the base two days before the match in Spartak, it turns out that I spent more than three years at the training camp. There is nothing to be done - professional football.
Now, in Zreche, there was nothing to do except to train. In order to somehow kill time, they constantly played cards. In the evening, they went down to the hall, and the time from dinner to the end time — about three hours — was killed quite easily.
There were training camps in my career that I really could call very interesting. With Spartak, we somehow traveled to Turkey. So there we were able to swim, and celebrate Yegor Titov’s holiday. He had a wedding anniversary, to which he saved a bottle of champagne - even at the wedding he twisted it with a rope, and it was possible to take it off only after a year. We took it off and drank the contents.
The most difficult gatherings were with Pavel Yakovenko. Although for all the severity of the load it was very interesting. In the morning we woke up, minted the ball for 45 minutes. Two daytime workouts - one shock, the other playing. In the evening - stretching. Of course, we washed four times a day, changed clothes, undressed, but the training process was exciting.
In the offseason, we had a medical examination - the same thing when in an oxygen mask you have to go along the treadmill. I took the second place. That is, the body has a reserve. For many, judging by the survey, a quarter less than mine. Apparently, young organisms are not ready to hold such a load - this is being developed over the years.
Alexei Smertin once said that in Europe people play longer because they do not spend as much time at the training camps as we do. In my opinion, the point is not how much to sit at the training camp, but how.
How is everything going on here? Matches every four to five days, and people know that before the game they will have to spend some time at the base. Therefore, they just played a match - and a whole day of partying. Anyway, then to the base, you will sleep there. Abroad, everything is different - I felt it in Israel. Already two days before the match, people go to bed on time, eat right and are prepared for the game. Well, and play as a result longer.
Because of the fees, I missed a lot in my life. For example, I was not near my wife when she gave birth to a second child - I was in Samara and did not even know that she went to the hospital. They took her at night, they tried to call me, but could not - I turned off the phone. When I woke up, it turned out that my wife had given birth, and I rushed to her.
About the birthdays of loved ones and my own I don’t even say - they often fall at the camps. However, there is nothing to blame here: such a schedule is a fee for the fact that, in terms of materiality, football players can afford more than others.