Fitness coach Alexei Scorpan gave an interview to our official website.

What is the role of the fitness coach in the training process? - What is the role? Of course, to prepare the team and to achieve maximum fitness, to make footballers give 100% on the pitch. The fitness coach must take care about the tears between the lines on the pitch. Physical preparation is needed for footballer to play and have enough endurance for all 90 minutes. It gives confidence. If on 60th or 70th minutes player feels, that his condition is great, he can produce right tactical and technical decisions. When the player gets tired, he begins to make mistakes, that can have negative effect on the result. That's why my aim is to prepare the whole team and each player for all 90 minutes.

Methods of physical preparations are constantly developing. What new has been brought to FC Sheriff preparation recently?

- Spanish model of play is dominating now in the world, that's why now our team follows Spanish principles of domination. We try to use more playing exercises. If in the past, according to our traditional preparation, we used mainly physical, running and jumping exercises, now we concentrate on playing exercises. Growing strength of the footballers was made in gym mainly. That's why now gym in certain cases can be substituted by playing exercises. 

And again, what is the main reason for Sheriff to choose Spanish model of preparation, and what is the difference from Italian, German or Latin models?

- What can I say, we follow Spanish school. But also we try to combine all the best from all models. The differences are the following. Spanish model concentrates on playing and tactical and technical exercises. Italian model consists mainly from running and power preparation. German model concentrates on power preparation. We don't have to strictly follow Spanish model, we try to combine different elements from other models.

Not long ago there has been a break for National Team's games, and soon National Teams will play again. How does the physical preparation cycle chang during this period?

- First of all we add exercises for speed and power, and the volume of training itself increases, we test footballers' endurance. When the championship goes on, we can't work on this because the players are not able to recover so quickly.

What is current condition of our players?

- Our players are ready for 90 or 95 per cent, I should say. The problem is in the players, who go to their National Teams, because they do not get workloads that others get. Coming to Nationsl Teams, they participate in training sessions, after that participate in matches. That's why they lose form. To tell the truth, the players who remain in the club are more ready to play, but I can't say that they are 100% ready.

FC Sheriff Press Service