Pep Guardiola will take the mental health of his international stars into consideration as Manchester City prepare for a quick turnaround into the new season.
The Premier League champions went down to a 1-0 Community Shield defeat against Leicester City on Saturday, their former striker Kelechi Iheanacho coming off the bench to win and convert a late penalty at Wembley.
Guardiola remained without Raheem Sterling, Phil Foden, Kyle Walker, John Stones, Ederson and Gabriel Jesus after their respective runs to the finals of Euro 2020 and the Copa America with England and Brazil.
The sextet will return to training on Monday, while Kevin De Bruyne is still on the mend after an ankle injury sustained during Belgium's progress to the quarter-finals of the European Championship.
Aymeric Laporte – a Euros semi-finalist with Spain – must self-isolate until the middle of next week because a passenger on his flight back to the United Kingdom after a vacation tested positive for COVID-19. The defender has tested negative.
It adds up to a far-from-ideal preparation for next weekend's league opener at Tottenham, a fixture likely to be lent a tempestuous edge by City's pursuit of Harry Kane.
Nevertheless, Guardiola knows a return to peak physical fitness will come in time, even though he again took aim at scheduling arrangements by UEFA and FIFA in his post-match comments at Wembley.
The former Barcelona boss is more concerned about the mental strain endured by players who have been on a near non-stop schedule since returning to action from the coronavirus lockdown last June.
Asked whether his England players would benefit from being afforded an extra week of rest, he replied: "It depends on their heads. They have to rest and now they can be ready, but it depends on here [the head].
On whether his returning internationals would be ready to play at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Guardiola replied: "A few players get the condition so quick, others need a little more time. We will see the weight, the body fat, how they arrive. And especially their heads.
"There are players who play three, four or five days and their mentality is positive and they are ready to fight and suffer in the bad conditions. Some of them take a little more time.
"We will try to discover which ones are ready immediately."
Foden is unlikely to be among that group, given he must still recover from the foot injury that ruled him out of England's penalty shoot-out loss to Italy.
Stones was an ever-present at centre-back for Gareth Southgate's side, while Sterling and Walker were each named in the UEFA Team of the Tournament.
"All of them, they played really well. I'm glad and happy for them. They have had many years together," Guardiola said.
"They made an incredible achievement. When you achieve a final in the Euro it's a big, big thing.
"They have to be so proud of what they have done with the national team. The benefits to the confidence will be there.
"But the past is the past. What you have done with the national team is for the memories. The challenge is ahead of us to do a good season."
Tottenham poised to announce Ange Postecoglou as their new manager
Tottenham are expected to announce Ange Postecoglou as their new manager after reports on Monday claimed the Celtic boss has agreed a two-year deal.
The 57-year-old Australian’s pending appointment will end Spurs’ long search for a permanent replacement for Antonio Conte, who they sacked in March.
Cristian Stellini and Ryan Mason had respective spells in temporary charge as the London club failed to qualify for European football next season for the first time since 2009-10.
Postecoglou told Celtic principal shareholder Dermot Desmond on Saturday night of his decision to leave the Glasgow club and has now agreed a deal in principle with Spurs, with the option to extend.
Former Australia head coach Postecoglou admitted on Saturday, after Celtic’s Scottish FA Cup final win over Inverness had secured them the domestic treble, that his celebrations would soon be disrupted.
Neither club have commented but reports claim an announcement will be made when the finer details of the contract have been finalised.
When repeatedly pressed on his future after Celtic’s 3-1 Hampden win over Inverness on Saturday, Postecoglou said: “I anticipate enjoying this moment for the next 24-48 hours, as long as I can, before someone drags me away and takes my attention away from enjoying something that’s been hard-earned.
“The reality is, there’s probably players in that dressing room who won’t be here next year. That’s the nature of football.”
Postecoglou has won five domestic trophies out of a possible six after arriving from Yokohama F Marinos in 2021 and was linked with numerous Premier League clubs throughout this season.
He became a hero with the Celtic support, not just for resuming their success after a barren season, but also for implementing an attacking style of play and his connection with the fans.
Postecoglou, due to go on a family holiday on Tuesday, will now swap Glasgow for another rebuild job at Spurs.
Former Hoops manager Brendan Rodgers has emerged as an unlikely favourite to succeed Postecoglou at Celtic, four years after leaving the club mid-season to take over at Leicester.
Assistant manager John Kennedy is also high up the list but reports claim Postecoglou hopes to take the former Celtic defender to Tottenham.
Virtual reality could help improve heading skills amid new restrictions – study
Virtual reality could help footballers improve their heading without the repetitive head impacts from a ball, a new study indicates.
Players involved in a study at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Sport and its Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences demonstrated greater performance in ‘real world’ heading after training with a VR headset compared to a control group who did no training.
The VR group also reported greater self-confidence and efficacy in their heading compared to the control group, the study found.
The study, titled: ‘A preliminary investigation into the efficacy of training soccer heading in immersive virtual reality’, has been published in the journal Virtual Reality on Tuesday.
It provides some insights into how players may be able to improve heading technique amid restrictions on training.
Football Association guidelines advise against any heading training in under-12s, while a trial is ongoing in the current season and next season to eliminate deliberate heading completely from matches up to and including that age group.
At ages 12 and 13, heading should be limited to a single session of no more than five headers, and no more than 10 headers per session for children aged 14 to 17, according to FA guidance.
Even in adult football at all levels, players are advised to perform only 10 ‘higher force headers’ per training week, such as headers from crosses, corners, free-kicks and returning of goal kicks.
The exposure to heading has been limited because of concerns over the sub-concussive impact of repetitive heading on a player’s longer-term wellbeing.
The 2019 FIELD Study found professional footballers were three and a half times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease than age-matched members of the general population.
“With increasing restrictions of heading exposure to professional and youth soccer, it is evident that alternative methods for training heading confidence and technique will be required while it remains an integral part of the game,” the VR paper concluded.
“The work presented here provides some initial evidence suggesting that immersive VR may have a place in any new approach to training this important skill.”
A group of 36 adult recreational-level players, made up of 30 men and six women, participated in the study in total.
The 36 were split into two groups of 18, with 16 men and two women in the control group who did not use the VR headsets between ‘real world’ heading sessions, and 14 men and four women in the VR group.
The VR group used the Oculus Quest 2 head-mounted display, with the Rezzil Player 22 application used to provide the VR football heading training.
Dr Ben Marshall, Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at the Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport, said: “Our findings show that virtual reality (VR) based training can be used to improve real-world heading performance and that this method is more effective than not training the skill at all.
“This is important as current training guidelines recommend limiting the number of physical headers performed in training for all age groups due to the associated long-term risks to player health.
“Our findings suggest the inclusion of VR-based training could play an important role in developing football heading skills whilst reducing the number of real-world headers and sub-concussive head impacts that players need to be exposed to – which is really positive.”
Caglar Soyuncu and Daniel Amartey among seven players leaving Leicester
Leicester have confirmed seven players will depart the club at the end of their contracts in June, including Caglar Soyuncu and Daniel Amartey.
The announcement comes following the Foxes’ relegation to the Championship on the final day of the Premier League season last month.
Turkish defender Soyuncu joined in 2018 from Freiburg and has featured over 100 times for Leicester, while fellow centurion Amartey made his first appearances for the club during their Premier League title-winning season in 2016.
Youri Tielemans is also among those leaving, having announced his exit on Instagram last week after spending four years with the club since joining from Monaco in 2019.
Nampalys Mendy, Ryan Bertrand, Ayoze Perez and Tete are the remaining players who are to leave the King Power following the expiration of their contracts.
Captain Jonny Evans remains in discussions with the Foxes as his contract is set to expire this month, while an option has been exercised to extend Hamza Choudhury’s contract to June 2024.
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