Tottenham Hotspur boss Ange Postecoglou and his players were out on the pitch for an open training session at the AAMI Park in Melbourne to prepare for their post-season friendly match against Newcastle United.
Spurs jetted off Down Under immediately after their 3-0 win at Sheffield United on Sunday evening to end their Premier League season and arrived in Australia in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Later on Tuesday they were given a short run around in front of 7,600 Tottenham fans inside the stadium.
Here are five things we noticed from the session:
Those missing
As well as those injured players who did not make the trip to Melbourne, there were a couple of other notable absentees in the shape of vice-captain Cristian Romero and midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg.
Postecoglou explained to football.london during his press conference the different circumstances surrounding the duo’s absence.
“Cuti for personal reasons, he’s got to fly back to Argentina. So we kind of knew that, some personal reasons,” he explained. “Pierre had an injury going into the last game and was kind of touch and go and after the game pulled up sore. Again because we were getting straight on a flight, it just didn’t make any sense to bring guys like that along.
“Everyone else got through it unscathed from the weekend so we’ll have a full compliment from the squad we took away and some young players as well and we’ll, if we can, get them some game time.”
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What they did
Anyone expecting the gruelling pre-season training sessions seen around the world during the summer tours would have been left disappointed but this was never going to be like that.
The Tottenham players were coming out to Australia for one more club game after a full Premier League season and having arrived in the early hours on the morning of training after a 24-hour or so flight, complete with jet lag and for some the aches and pains of the match at Sheffield United in their bodies.
The session reflected that with some early short runs and warm-up work, followed by some ball drills and then while the goalkeepers went through their drills, the outfield players formed groups for rondos, where they formed a circle around two players trying to get the ball.
It’s fair to say that while one rondo featured some moments of reasonably high intensity, the other two didn’t quite match that and had all of the enthusiasm that jet lag would allow.
The energetic rondo was, perhaps predictably, the one packed with younger players looking to impress such as Jamie Donley and Dane Scarlett, along with fresher senior players like Oliver Skipp, Bryan Gil and Emerson Royal.
All eyes on Ange
There were plenty of Korean fans desperate to watch Son Heung-min in action, as well as plenty of Australian supporters, but most of the 7,600-strong crowd was there to see Postecoglou.
The 58-year-old grew up in Melbourne and he’s certainly one of its favourite sons. There was a huge cheer for him whenever he came near the crowd and he spent much of the start of the session spending time with the fans at the front of the main stand.
When it was put to him before the session whether he knew just how proud people are of him back home, Postecoglou said: “It’s the first time I’ve been back to Melbourne since 2019, pre-Covid days, so I’m a bit detached but I’ve got friends here and they’ve made me aware.
“Part of me understands that because there was a whole part of my life where I was here and following other people overseas, mainly players. You go on their journey with them, whether that was Viduka or Kewell or Cahill or Schwarzer, you could name every team they played for. I understand the impact that makes. It’s not something I’m conscious of on a daily basis but I understand that if I can continue to make inroads where I am then it continues to shine a light on Australia and Australian people.”
Ditching the kit and Porro mucking around
This was the last time that the Tottenham players were going to wear their training kits for this season so they went around the stadium after the session dispensing of the old Getir-sponsored attire into the crowd.
Staff brought out bags of training wear, flown over from back home, and skipper Son led the team around the pitch as they hurled the shirts and jackets into the delighted throngs of fans.
Son had one nice moment with a young supporter that had beckoned him over and other players sought out certain fans that caught their eye, Gil doing that as he was about to leave the pitch.
Then there was the ever-laughing Pedro Porro, who spent plenty of time teasing the fans, pretending to throw bits of kits into the crowd but not actually letting go, getting them all worked up before finally lobbing the items of clothing into the air towards them. It was a prank he repeated across the three stands of supporters.
A knee slide that brought laughs
A couple of fans managed to make their way on to the pitch towards the end of the session before being grabbed by the stewards before they reached the players, although one youngster managed to get some boots after his sprint.
One supporter got further than most, running almost half the length of the pitch but he only wanted to show off a very impressive knee slide on the turf in front of them, before being hauled away by the stewards.
The knee slide gained plenty of laughs from the Tottenham players, James Maddison being particularly tickled by it, and Emerson delivered a demonstration of what had happened to those who missed it.
To be fair the supporter probably had more energy than most of the jet-lagged Spurs players did.
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