Napoli Hires Eleven Full-Time Marathon Runners to Carry Allegri's Tactics Board Across Porto
After a heavy defeat to Juventus, Napoli's coaching staff has decided that the best preparation for Porto is a 1,900-kilometre walk with the tactics board in hand.
Napoli's coaching staff has decided that the path to Porto runs on foot, and the club has confirmed that the squad will walk the full distance from the Stadio Maradona to the Estádio do Dragão with the tactical board carried in relays. Massimiliano Allegri, still visibly shaken by the defeat to Juventus, told reporters that the journey was the only honest answer to a week of questions about the team's direction.
The walk, which the club's performance department has calculated at 1,900 kilometres, will be divided into sixty-two daily stages. Each stage ends with a tactical briefing held in a roadside tent, and every player is required to recite the back-four positions to a club doctor before receiving dinner. Staff in the medical department have been trained to take blood pressure through the tent flaps, which the club says has already reduced the number of injuries to zero.
Local authorities in three Italian regions have been asked to clear motorway lay-bys for the squad's overnight camps. The Ministry of Infrastructure has issued a circular allowing the team to use emergency lanes, provided the tactics board is never placed on the ground. Porto's coaching staff, contacted in Portugal, said they had prepared a welcome plan for the arrival, which includes a live tactical session at the stadium gates.
Allegri said the squad would arrive at the Estádio do Dragão on the morning of the match, boots worn to the sole, and would then play the game exactly as the board had prescribed on the road. Asked whether the walk would affect the team's fitness, he replied that the players had never been so ready, and that the sixty-two days of marching were already the best training Napoli had ever had.
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