Pre-season trips/training abroad

osarusan

I just saw a BBC article about Burnley in their pre-season camp in Austria. I remember that Limerick FC went to Spain last year (Basque I think) for some training and friendlies.

Is there any real benefits to this, as opposed to staying at home and doing the training at home? Is it cheaper? Better facilities? Better friendlies?

Note: this is different from teams going on tours to drum up/reward support, like some tours of Asia.

nice_guy80

osarusan wrote: »

I just saw a BBC article about Burnley in their pre-season camp in Austria. I remember that Limerick FC went to Spain last year (Basque I think) for some training and friendlies.

Is there any real benefits to this, as opposed to staying at home and doing the training at home? Is it cheaper? Better facilities? Better friendlies?

Note: this is different from teams going on tours to drum up/reward support, like some tours of Asia.

Of course there's a benefit to it

eg Everton are in Austria at the moment with their senior squad.
The U21s and U18s were there the previous two weeks for preseason.

All the players are together for an extended period of time - no distractions. More training sessions can be done each day, both physical, technical and more time can be scheduled for recovery. Multiple testing can be done through the preseason.
A targetted diet can be followed for the trip away, as some players will naturally come back a bit chunky and others will have lost weight.
Plus a few social activities can be organised to help squad moral and bed in new signings.

The Lost Sheep

Players together for longer. Team management can control what is done and these trips used for team bonding for morale
Its a different environment to the normal training ground players use day in day out which helps with state of mind especially in pre season where training is at its toughest