Tottenham Hotspur players were collapsing all over the place with Harry Kane needing to be sick during Antonio Conte's brutal two-hour training session in South Korea but Troy Parrott explained to
football.london why he managed to make it to the end as others fell around him.
After two hours of training in the Seoul World Cup Stadium in high temperatures and humidity, in which the
Tottenham stars were put through various drills, match situations and two-touch and multi-touch matches,
Conte unleashed his renowned pre-season nightmare on the players - 42 pitch-long runs, with very few brief stops, to see who lasted the distance at the end of their third training session in just over 24 hours.
Conte had already lost Dejan Kulusevski to what looked like a precaution with a small calf problem earlier in the evening before the match sessions, but he had players dropping like flies as fitness coach Gian Piero Ventrone put them through their paces in what has become a renowned Conte method for getting his players super fit over the years
The target was 42 pitch-long runs at the end of the two-hour session for the players who came back earlier in pre-season and 30 for the international stars who returned just before the flight to Korea.
Harry Kane, who only returned on Saturday morning for the flight from Heathrow, was one of the first to collapse, falling to the edge of the pitch, needing to be sick and requiring a cold towel on the back of neck, and a member of Spurs' medical staff came over to check on him before he later returned to the runs to complete his set. Soon after
Son Heung-min also fell to the floor in some discomfort and brought a hush to the 6,000 fans inside the stadium.
Kane went over to check on him and eventually the South Korea captain got to his feet and also returned to the running to a cheer from the crowd. Others joined them in dropping to the floor, including new boy Yves Bissouma, until eventually only a core of super-fit players, who had been training longer in pre-season, remained to complete their 42 runs.
Davinson Sanchez, Bryan Gill and newcomer Pape Matar Sarr were among the fittest and led many of the later runs by a distance, but it was
Troy Parrott who led the group back in the 42nd and final run of the night.
That was entirely fitting because just hours earlier, at a Tottenham Hotspur Global football development session with young adults from ChildFund Korea, Parrott had told
football.london when asked how gruelling Conte's sessions were: "It depends who you ask. I'm quite a good runner naturally, but yeah it's been tough. It's been hard work but it's all preparation."
Conte's pre-season training sessions are the stuff of legend in Italy. In Juventus' recent Amazon All or Nothing documentary series, after seeing his players tired following one session, then boss Andrea Pirlo could be heard to tell his coaches: "Can you imagine what they would say if they were here in Conte's day? They'd be dead."
Also in Conte's session with his Spurs players on Monday, he was involved in the centre of an 11 vs 11 match, working on shape. He could be seen telling Matt Doherty to move the ball quicker out from the back and spent a time after that game talking to new goalkeeper Fraser Forster and was motioning a kicking motion with his foot, perhaps delivering a similar message about the speed he wants the ball to be moved out of defence.
New boy Richarlison netted a couple of goals in the two training matches, spending some time in a three with Lucas Moura and Gil, who struggled in front of goal with a number of wayward efforts but otherwise looked bright on the right, for the first two-touch match, before the new Brazilian switched sides to partner up with Kane and Son for the second game.
The teams for the first two-touch match, in 3-4-3 formations, with had just one goal and a line to cross at the other end, were: Yellow bibs: Forster; Tanganga, Fagan-Walcott, Davies; Doherty, Hojbjerg, Bissouma, White; Parrott, Kane, Son. Orange bibs: Romero, Dier, Sanchez; Emerson, Bentancur, Skipp, Sessegnon; Gil, Richarlison, Moura.