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Beer & Blackpool beach was how British players bonded - Pulis
Hearing about Tottenham 's team-bonding trip to Marbella last week made me think about the similar methods I used as a manager to build team morale. While some things have changed from my day, the idea behind taking your players away to a new environment where they will benefit from spending a lot of time together has not. I wrote a few weeks ago about how Spurs boss Roberto de Zerbi needed time with his players on the training pitch after their poor start to the season, to bed them in and build a proper team. He will have used their warm-weather camp in southern Spain to do more of that, getting to know what is almost a new squad of players. With De Zerbi being cut from Italian cloth, I am sure the players will have been working mornings and afternoons to drill in the manager's principles in respect to team shape and direction. But that's not the only purpose of taking them away. De Zerbi will also have been able to monitor the different personalities within the group away from the grass. If the trip has worked then, as well as getting them ready to face Coventry on Monday night, I am sure he will now, for the first time, understand the strengths and weaknesses of each individual, on and off the field. A few eyebrows were raised about Spurs going away so early in the season but it makes perfect sense to me when you consider so many new players arrived there this summer, with several signings late in the transfer window. When I was Stoke manager, I often took my teams away to Austria in our pre-season for the same reasons De Zerbi and Spurs have gone to Spain. Those trips were set up not only to test the players' fitness, but also to see how the group worked together. I have always believed in building a family togetherness within the dressing room, with a commitment from every player to the benefit of the team. The extreme tests that we asked our players to do over that 10-day period brought out an inner determination to fulfil the tasks given them and, in my opinion, helped us through some tough times early on in our Premier League campaigns. Watching the lads slowly bond together on the training pitch and at meal times was great to see and I found out a lot about all of them, good and bad. Yes, I have to admit one or two players were short of the character we wanted and needed, but they didn't last long and left with no bad feelings on my side. Today, whether it's pre-season or a winter break, most Premier League clubs who take their players away go first-class and enjoy great hotels, great facilities and wonderful food. Wherever the team bus goes, it is followed by an even bigger bus with all the non-playing staff on it. It is very different to my experiences in my early years as a player, when we would be taken to Blackpool for three days' pre-season training. Again, the idea was to bring the lads closer together, but that happened in a different way than today's professionals are used to. We stayed in a guest house with three-quarter beds that we all shared - that certainly brought us closer together! - then trained on the beach each morning, doing our running sessions on the sand. Then we played seven-a-side games in the afternoon on a local park pitch, after clearing the dog muck off first. In the evenings, we were allowed out for a few beers, with no time stipulated for our return - apart from having to be downstairs and ready to hit the beach again at 8am the next morning. That is where things have changed most of all, right through football, during the past few years. In the 1970s and 80s, there was a massive drinking culture right through the leagues - just listen to the stories that came out of clubs as big as Liverpool, Manchester United or Arsenal, when they had teams who not only dominated English football but the European game too. In my early years of management, the bonding I've been talking about used to happen right through the season through the lads meeting in pubs after games and after training on week days as well. Winter breaks were rare and, rather than for a training camp, the only time most players I knew went to Spain was at the end of the season when more alcohol would be consumed. That was what British players classed as bonding sessions and, as I've written about before, even the ones at the top level were much more connected to normal society, rather than living in an eternal bubble. Now, while they are certainly more aware of the dangers of drinking to excess, as a manager you have to find other ways for them to connect when there are other distractions to contend with. One item I am very glad my generation was not brought up with is mobile phones. I used to go mad if I walked into a dining room at the training ground or a hotel to see a group of lads looking at their phone and not engaging with each other. I sometimes think that, as a young player, I had nothing compared to the players of today but, really, we had everything. The stories, the friendships and the memories of the togetherness I remember from every dressing room during that time still resonate with me and recreating them was always my aim as a manager. Some other things have changed too - I am not sure De Zerbi has ever considered taking his team away to an army camp like I did on many occasions early in my managerial career, where we worked on the players in different ways. One year, I took Stoke down to Exmouth, where the lads were put through their paces doing cross-country circuits. That probably doesn't sound too bad on the face of it, but it was freezing cold and chucking it down and the circuits incorporated climbing and swimming under water in a darkened tunnel - I did all of it too by the way - while trying to keep up with the Army PT Instructor. That was just the morning, the afternoon was spent indoors, where the boys were set different kinds of tasks, where their minds were tested with more practical team-building exercises where they had, say, 20 minutes to use some drums and planks to cross an area without touching the ground. At night, they slept in bunk beds with only plastic sheeting over the mattress, and one very thin blanket. Like my own trips to Blackpool as a player, it was spit and sawdust but everyone bought into it and attacked every challenge with great gusto and spirit. As I moved onwards and upwards as a manager I was allowed to take teams abroad, to locations that were a little more lavish. Irdning in Austria is my favourite destination, and somewhere I have taken many clubs over the years. It is a small town in the Alps that is ideal in every aspect of what I wanted as a manager, and not just because of the mountains I made my players run or cycle up! We have almost always stayed in the same place there, too - a 1,000-year-old building I call 'The Castle'. It has swimming pools, a large gym, saunas, steam rooms, a spa and a golf course - you get the picture. Real Madrid stayed there all the time too - it led to us playing them in a friendly in 2007 because we had already booked it and they said they would play us if we swapped hotel - yet my first time there could have turned out to be a disaster. It was in 2004, during my first spell as Stoke manager, when I was having a tough time under the Icelandic ownership who were at the club at that time - I liked them as people but we all tended to largely disagree when it came to football. My first-team then was made up of some really strong characters, but who were also great lads and old-school to the core, in the ways I've been talking about in this column. During our first three days in Irdning, they had worked their socks off. The fourth day was meant to be the rest day where, fishing, golf or shopping was on the agenda but the players had other ideas. Gerry Taggart, who was a fantastic lad, came and asked if the boys could borrow the team bus and go somewhere to have a few beers away from our hotel. Now, being a manager and not in the dressing room as a player, my responsibilities had changed. The group had been brilliant in responding to all the hard work I had thrown at them, so I agreed - well, kind of! Knowing what a 'fun-loving' group the lads were, and the fact they would be out of my sight, and control, the alarm bells were going off in my head, loud and clear. So, without the lads' knowledge, I paid the bus driver a few quid to make sure he didn't find any really exciting places, and they ended up coming back to the hotel. The players eventually worked out that I had instigated this under-cover plot but I know it didn't stop them having a great time because it was at our hotel, where I could keep an eye on them. That's probably not something De Zerbi had to worry about last week! I wanted to end this column by talking about a football match. Manchester City's Champions League game against Paris St-Germain last week was an absolute throwback, which provided so many crosses, shots and goalmouth action. PSG were fantastic in the first half but City really showed their teeth after the break and, in my humble opinion, were unlucky not to get anything out of the game. Both teams played football through the pitch, got the ball to the most talented players - the forwards - as quickly as possible and produced unbelievable excitement. There was no passing backwards or square, and hopefully any young coaches watching will have been influenced by both teams' urgency to play forward. You cannot mention City at the moment without referencing what is going on with them off the pitch. When news broke that they had been found guilty of breaking the Premier League's financial rules, I wrote tongue in cheek, asking City to send over the FA Cup and winners medals from 2011 to my old club Stoke. Surprisingly, they have not arrived... but as the fall-out continues from the verdict of the independent commission, I'd like to add some further thoughts on the whole saga and ask some questions of my own. But one thing I would like to ask people to explore is why, after the Premier League discovered that City first broke these rules, it has taken so long get to this point. Why were the Premier League top-brass still standing on the podiums, presenting City with the many trophies they have won in this time? The situation now has cast a shadow over the entire game.
Source: BBC Sport
Mon, 19 Oct 2026
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