Oh_Snap
Well-Known Member
As an aside, did anyone see the recent Wenger interview where he pointed out that we are reaching the limits of what we can do to improve players physically and that in his opinion the next step will be to look at the neurology of players and to try to train their brains to make decisions quicker and better. I thought that was fascinating.
There's still some stuff physically that is overlooked. Mertesacker was doing this himself, he knew he was clumsy so he tried to optimize, what he could optimize - his eyes:
"On my right side my timing was super but I had the feeling my left eye was not really up for it. Why was that? And was it possible to train and improve [the left eye] so that I didn’t have to turn my whole body in order to look left? It all meant that in 50% of the times the ball came towards me my brain said: “Hey, I can’t really see that ball so I’m not going to jump for it.
And as my left eye was not really looking at the ball I was always twisting my neck to use my dominant right eye.
Football doesn’t really deal with those things, despite the fact they can be decisive. Players would rather lift weights, stand on their own with their dumbbells – but how does that help me on the pitch?
During the exercises with Lars one could see quite clearly that my eyes were moving differently when an object was approaching me. My left eye always remained in the middle rather than focusing on the object.
He showed me how to make my left eye stronger. I had a patch on my right eye, forcing my left eye to focus on the objects. And after a few weeks I could really notice the difference in games. If there was a high ball from the left I had a much better feeling for where it would end up."
From https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...tesacker-book-extract-arsenal-academy-manager
Good to know he is still with us.