Tony Cascarino's football lesson No 8: How to start matches sharply

In my early playing days there was little warm-up – or none. A warm-up for Terry Cochran, one of my Gillingham team-mates, consisted of having a fag in the toilets, a couple of quick runs, then kick-off. It was like he wasn’t there for the first fifteen minutes of matches. “I’ll warm up during the game,” he used to say, and he’d be stretching while play was going on.

I’m sure Cristiano Ronaldo was ready from the start yesterday against Barcelona because top teams take warm-ups very seriously. He looked focused. It’s just that no one expects to take a penalty so early. It’s not a surprise that he squandered it – it was a pressure kick in the Nou Camp, after all, and between one in three and one in four penalties are missed. It’s the fact that he put the ball wide that surprised me, and that was probably down to how soon in the game the spot-kick was awarded.

I like watching teams warm-up, so I’ve seen plenty. You never see anyone practising penalties before a match. They’ll blast the ball at goal from distance but not from the spot. It’s partly because the spot is so close that it seems too easy - also perhaps because penalty-takers wouldn’t want to tip-off opponents about where they are trying to place the kick.

There’s also a school of thought, more popular a few years back, that a penalty is a spontaneous and unexpected scenario so it’s impossible to prepare for – it’s all about how you feel and what you do in the moment when you step up and take it. I don’t buy it – for me, practise breeds confidence.

Penalties or no penalties, a good warm-up of 10-20 minutes is vital if you are to start the game sharply, and, more importantly, reduce your injury risk. About half the warm-up should be intense – because you’ll start the game at high tempo – and the rest easing in, some jogging, light work with the ball so you get a feel for it. It takes five minutes just for your muscles to warm up.

It might seem weird that in players warm up then go back to the dressing-room and sit down for the team-talk. Under Graham Taylor at Aston Villa we warmed-up in the dressing-room, sprinting on the spot, to counteract that. You also see players dart around on the pitch just before kick-off to make up for that five or ten minutes of inactivity.

Don’t neglect mental preparation, either. If you are mentally fatigued, you’ll be physically tired, too. If you are mentally strong, that will push you to higher levels of achievement. As I matured as a player, I realised that in the minutes and hours before kick-off it helped me to concentrate when I talked to team-mates about what might happen in the upcoming game, what tactics each side would use, which players to watch out for. As opposed to the sort of chat many footballers go for – what shirt you’ll wear at the nightclub after the game, who’s got the best-looking girlfriend, etc.

So it’s really important to prepare properly. But it’s worth remembering that the human mind and body work in strange ways. There were times when I prepared really well and felt lethargic, times when my preparation was less than textbook but I felt great. Because they don’t like to give excuses, players don’t often admit to it publicly, but sometimes, for no apparent reason, they just lack energy and sharpness.

In the dressing-room after a game, you often hear players complain that they’ve got “nothing in the tank”. Less imaginative than one of my favourite phrases, which a player told me during a game: “I feel as strong as a half-sucked mint”.

Sometimes I felt as if my legs were hollow, and I couldn’t jump. “I couldn’t get a newspaper under your feet, Cas!” Before my Gillingham home debut, thinking I would be the “fourteenth man” at a time when football only allowed two substitutes, I had a double Wimpy, chips and a Knickerbocker Glory at 1.20pm. I ended up playing and felt great. 

When he was Ireland manager, Jack Charlton occasionally gave us permission to have a couple of beers the night before a game, on the basis that it wouldn’t do any harm and might relax us, improve our mood or help us sleep. I’m not suggesting eating junk food and drinking beer before games is a good routine, but sometimes doing “the wrong thing” doesn’t actually do any harm.

Comments

[Stephen Manick]

Thanks Tony, after all these years it still takes me five or ten minutes to really get into the game once its started. Now I think I'll have a beer before kickoff to see if your theory works; sounds much better than sprinting on the spot.

[Neil Graham]

Out of all the football writers for the Times, this guy is the best! He always talks sense and covers issues which are relevant. Well done! Keep up the good work!