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Through the Perlacher Forest: Holger Broich (left) and David Alaba
Photo:
imago sportfoto / imago / Overstreet
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Broich, the new Bundesliga season is starting and the schedule for the 2021 European Championship is as tight as never before.
Joachim Löw has already criticized the few breaks and said: "The players are on their gums."
Is it going to be a season where fitness is decisive?
Holger Broich:
There is a saying: fitness is not everything, but without fitness everything is nothing.
There is something true.
Perhaps this season, physique and regeneration will be even more important than before.
The next season will be a challenge.
SPIEGEL:
Injuries from excessive stress are a danger.
How can you prevent it?
Broich:
At FC Bayern, for example, we use monitoring systems that show us the potential risk of injury to a professional.
Here we observe how much a player has been stressed in training and in play and how his regeneration proceeds.
We have "traffic light systems", but for different measuring ranges, i.e. several traffic lights.
The traffic lights also refer to different data sources in terms of content.
SPIEGEL:
What injuries usually occur when a red light is ignored?
Broich:
Often it is muscle injuries.
You can't prevent everything, football is a two-way sport.
But when too many injuries of this type occur, you have to question your system.
Then there is simply something wrong with the stress control.
It is not that we immediately take a player out of a red light, but it is a warning signal and then we talk to Hansi Flick in the coaching team and discuss the next steps.
Less workouts are one way to reduce stress.
SPIEGEL:
The DFB has put its national players from Stuttgart to Basel, 250 kilometers away, on a plane instead of traveling by train or train, also so as not to endanger the regeneration of the professionals.
But that's an exaggeration, isn't it?
Broich:
I don't know the reasons for this decision in detail.
You will have discussed it internally and made a conscious decision.
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Holger Broich has several employees in his fitness team, but he is usually the head of the department
Photo: Sven Hoppe / picture alliance / dpa
SPIEGEL:
You were already working for FC Bayern under Pep Guardiola.
He often suffered muscle injuries in the final third of the season.
Didn't the traffic light system exist back then?
Broich:
Yes, it already existed.
But every trainer has his own philosophy, everyone works differently.
I already had a few head coaches at Bayern: Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti, Jupp Heynckes, Niko Kovac, now Hansi Flick.
Everyone has their own leadership and cooperation style.
But to be honest you have to say that we weren't quite as advanced then as we are today.
SPIEGEL:
Almost 18 months ago, during his time in Bavaria, Niko Kovac said that you can't try to drive a team of 200 km / h on the autobahn if they can only manage 100 km / h.
The team to which this sentence was based was almost the same that has now won the triple of the championship, DFB Cup and Champions League.
How is that possible?
Broich:
There was a change of coach.
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In exchange with the Flick predecessors: Broich with Niko (middle) and Robert Kovac (r.)
Photo: Matthias Balk / picture alliance / dpa
SPIEGEL:
How is it under Flick?
Broich:
Hansi Flick trusts the expertise and the people who work in the departments, including me.
He listens to us all.
Hansi is a decided team player.
How he leads the team and the staff is really outstanding, Hansi has very great skills.
He does it with empathy and trust, he gives people great appreciation, and at the same time he demands a lot.
But it is also the case that with him as head coach everything stands and falls.
We from the departments are his bodyguards.
We support him as best we can, but in the end he has to decide.
SPIEGEL:
Are the FC Bayern soccer players interested in your area of expertise?
Broich:
Definitely.
But I also believe that the Corona situation played a special role here and that it created even more awareness of this topic.
We haven't had any competitions for a long time, but at the same time there was a great willingness to stay fit and get even fitter.
We were able to prepare over a very long period of time, we could set supra-threshold training stimuli and we did not have to take any competitions into account.
When the competitive season started again, we were physically up to scratch - and in the end we even won the triple.
You saw what fitness can do.
SPIEGEL
: Löw once had the famous German virtues of running, fighting, biting, i.e. physical fitness, called the basics of football, everyone can and has.
It is the prerequisite for everything else.
Did everyone master the multiplication tables at the Champions League tournament?
Broich
: From the exchange with other colleagues, I already know that many clubs position themselves accordingly in this specialist area.
Olympique Lyon in particular was physically strong in the semi-finals.
The team has apparently made good use of the very long Corona interruption in the French league.
The "little multiplication tables" are simply not enough today.
The "big one" should be added.
SPIEGEL:
What does that mean?
Broich:
I have a really large scientific support team at FC Bayern, in which experts from different disciplines work continuously.
We always consider current scientific findings based on evidence.
We use sophisticated measurement techniques.
The data are not only collected descriptively, but follow the principle of selection - aggregation - evaluation - implementation - critical reflection with the aim of maintaining health and optimizing performance.
In view of the large amount of data, of course, sophisticated statistical methods and those of artificial intelligence are also used here - and not just the "multiplication tables".
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Expert, head coach and world champion: Broich, Flick and Boateng
Photo:
TF Images / Getty Images
SPIEGEL:
FC Bayern have high hopes for Leroy Sané.
Are you getting him to the point?
After all, he comes from a cruciate ligament injury.
Broich:
It was a difficult constellation.
When we were already preparing for the Champions League tournament in Lisbon, Leroy had to continue training in Munich.
He was injured for seven months last year and still needs some time.
He still has room for improvement.
However, he only reaches his limit with competitive practice, which we cannot simulate in training, so he has to come to the rescue now.
SPIEGEL:
Alphonso Davies is probably the discovery of the past season.
How do you view it and will it continue to develop in such a straight line?
Broich:
Phonzie is a rocket.
I have seldom seen a player with such tremendous speed.
When you look at his data, it's really exciting.
He does everything, really all movements, at maximum speed.
And he doesn't do ten or 15 sprints per game, but 40 or 50 - that's immense, and that's why I'm not so surprised how he's developing.
But he has also improved tactically, he is self-confident because the coach trusts him.
However, the Phonzie battery will also run out at some point, especially now when we will have a game every three days.
We'll have to slow it down sometime.
SPIEGEL:
What does Uli Hoeneß actually say about your work, someone who speaks louder and more polemical about football?
Broich:
We have definitely had a lot of conversations and at the beginning they were sometimes more controversial.
I will never forget how he once said that football shouldn't be too scientific either.
But that doesn't happen to me either, I don't want that at all.
I've played soccer myself, and that helps to gauge which scientific approaches can help us - and which don't.
We do not do basic research, but application research.
We can measure a lot, but it also has to make sense.
I think Mr Hoeneß is quite relaxed now.
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