Luciano Spalletti doesn’t want his national team to be distracted by training camps.

Euro 2024 is this year, and Spalletti is serious about preparing for it. He has decided to ban PlayStation from the team’s training camps because he is an old-fashioned coach. (This is probably a generalization, so Xbox and Nintendo could be similarly banned hardware). He wants the team’s athletes to be dedicated and focused. On the surface, the change is simple; it’s a deeper philosophical shift to create a high-performance environment with as few distractions as possible. The collective purpose of the team is paramount.

Spalletti told Gazzetta dello Sport that social media and modern conveniences are having a negative impact on athletes’ focus and work ethic. His criticism is not just about the games, because he wants to see a cultural change: he wants to focus on the hard work and sacrifice of professional sports, rather than personal expression and leisure activities. In this way, the coach wants to create a space where the members of the national team can interact more deeply with each other and thus more easily achieve the team’s strategic goals.

He wants to bring the team together, and their mental preparation is also important, and it’s very necessary in international tournaments. Of course, the void left by the games will be filled by alternative leisure and team-building activities. Spalletti did not elaborate on these activities, but their purpose is to get the players psychologically pumped up so that they can make positive progress as athletes and as a team without being distracted from their primary task.

Spalletti’s approach is reminiscent of that of Italian football legend Gianluigi Buffone (now head of the delegation): he wants the same professionalism and commitment from his national team members. Of course, this is only part of the training camp and it remains to be seen if it will bear fruit. If it does, Spalletti will be carried around Rome on the shoulders of Italians who are great football fans…

Source: SoccerDino