As the signs of the January transfer star go, a 78-year-old American track and field coach is unconventional. For Manchester United and Ruben Amorim, even if it was not the head coach’s call, it is actually very logical. The appointment of Harry Marra, based on a few weeks, was designed to improve United Individual and Collective Efficient and repeatedly.
Marra, who graduated from Syracuse University in 1974 with a master’s degree in physical education and practice sciences, is best known for coaching the American decathlete Ashton Eaton to Gold at the Olympic Games (London 2012, RIO 2016) and World Championships (Moscow 2013, Beijing in 2015, where he also received the world record, since beaten). Eaton still has the world ten -racatlon the best more than 400 meters (45.00 seconds), and in the top 25 Decathlon versions of all time his 10.23S 100m is second.
Marra’s relationship with Eaton dates from the early years of 2010 when they worked at the University of Oregon, where Marra also coached Brianne Theisen to NCAA titles and collegial records. As Heptathlete she won an Olympic bronze (Rio 2016) and World Silvers (Moscow 2013, Beijing 2015).
Marra also worked for more than 10 years at the same time as the San Francisco Giants Baseball team and as the Decathlon coach of USA Track & Field.
In 2018, Marra coached the Indonesian Sprinter Lalu Muhammad Zohri for gold at the World Athletics U20 championships. With a personal record up to 10.03, Zohri is about to become only the 11th Asian man who broke the 10 -second barrier in the 100m.
What does this have to do with Manchester United? A lot. It is a sign of Marra’s coaching quality that he, for more than 40 years, has been successful with teams, groups and individuals of different ages, backgrounds, starting levels and resources. If the criticism is that his age makes him without contact, consider the open -mindedness and the adaptability he needs to work with top athletes and teams longer than Amorim lives.
Marra with Eaton in 2016 (Andy Lyons/Getty images)
What is even more important is that more and better running is something that Amorim United wants to do. “If you want to win the Premier League, you have to run as Mad Dogs,” he said in December, before a 3-2 defeat to Nottingham Forest, his fifth match. “If not, we are not going to do it (win), that is clear. It is impossible to win the Premier League without a team that runs back at any time runs ahead. Even with the best starting XI, without running, they will not win anything ”.
The revolution of the late 2000s led by Sports Sciences has catalyzed a transformation of the Premier League into the most athletic competition of Europe, and it is still increasing in intensity. One study by Premier League competitions between 2006 and 2013 showed 30 and 35 percent increase in high intensity and sprint distances. Another article found rises of 12 and 15 percent in the same statistics from 2014-15 to 2018-19. Data from Skillcorner show that the turnout has continued. This season, the average remote matches remotely remotely by 16 percent higher on the 2018-19 campaign. Sprint frequencies have risen with a fifth and sprint distance of more than 23 percent.
“It wasn’t me, it was the club,” said Amorim of Marra’s appointment. “We always try to bring experienced people to share knowledge with the staff, to understand the body, to understand how you can improve our players. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t something new. He is not there to coach the team, he is there to coach the staff about everything about the running, et cetera. It is a simple thing that we are used to improving as a club. “
Amorim who wants to build a team about intensity and physicality is not new. Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Bournemouth had or had supported identities by urgent and aggressive running. His predecessor, Erik ten Hag, wanted United “the best transition team in the world”. He also turned to specialized coaching and appointed Benni McCarthy as a rush coach before Marcus Rashford produced his most productive season in 2022-23 (30 goals in all competitions).
It is important that every specialized sprint coach will not make players considerably faster. Acceleration, strength and top speed can be refined but not taught. Those attributes are so much due to the physiological construction of a player. That is Shown by the career trajectory of Elite -SprintersWhose talent is clear in childhood and before intentional training, and they reach a world class or peak status much earlier than other sports.
Instead, a specialized coach must help identify and minimize problems in mechanics that can lead to injury. Last season, United had the most loss of time injuries in the competition And struggled to name a consistent back four. Harry Maguire and Mason Mount, who have been injured several times, are examples of “problem cases” and “repeated rehabilitation”, terms used by Jonas Dodoo, a performance adviser at Brighton & Hove Albion and Newcastle United who specializes in motion and sprint coaching And analysis.
Dodoo, whose background in sprint coaching in rugby and then came athletics, first worked as a performance advisor in football in 2016 with Derby County. He quotes Theo Walcott and Tariq Lamptey – two players with a remarkable pace – among the players he helped to rehabilitate. He describes the coaching model that he uses as: “Brake, plant, separated. That’s what they should be able to do. ‘
Marra Coaching Eaton and Theisen in Eugene, Oregon in 2013 (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
“They must be able to brake aggressively and efficiently so that they can effectively plant and separate their opponents and run quickly,” says Dodoo. “You must be conditioned to create the types of forces needed, but also need efficiency, and to do so repeatedly – 40, 60 times in the game you might have to accelerate, and the forces are even more stressful in a body In a body delay. ‘
Completely changing the mechanics of a player would rarely cost the time, training and resources that football offers, but there are still a profit in coaching sprinting. “You want to ensure that they can get in the positions and postures that are needed to delay, accelerate and change direction well,” says Dodoo. “That is the starting point that you start (coaching) around. In terms of sprint power you can make very fast and effective changes to the first three steps that ensure that they know how to create the forces in the right direction.
“If you can accelerate very well on your first three steps and if you know how you can stop aggressively in your first three steps of delay, then that can have a fundamental effect on your physical qualities and performance.”
The nature of football and its spelling phases (with so much possession, set pieces and 22 players on a 105m x 68m pitch) means Players rarely affect their real top speeds in matches. It is the reason, at the PSV academy, their benchmark for performance on the first team in a 30 m sprint test also includes a threshold for how quickly players need the first 10 m.
Players buy time and space faster and more efficient gears and delays (or reduce it for opponents). “If your equipment is really aggressive, the rest can be done with scanning and preparing for the next promotion,” says Dodoo.
United’s Academy-in Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho, Amad and Anthony Elanga (sold to Nottingham Forest in July 2023)-has some of the best linear runners and gears developed in the division. “Elanga is the model,” says Dodoo, who is co-ownership of SpeedWorks Training, a sprint coaching company that developed a database of athletes “in football, NFL, Elite and international rugby. We have 5,000 runs for 3,000 players. What we like very Efficient and effective considering is what he (elanga) produces in his run. “
Elanga again. 😮way pic.twitter.com/AQK1TYLVBI
– Nottingham Forest (@nffc) December 26, 2024
In the first two months of this season, Rashford, Garnacho and Elanga all made the list for the top 10 highest speeds in a Premier League match – because players rarely touch top speed and they called the ‘fastest’ would be a wrong name. That Amad might not be because of his course. He stands out for taking many short steps with low Hiellift (and has a turbulent arm style reminiscent of colleague Ivorian and 100m Sprinter Marie-Josee Ta Lou) while Garnacho takes major steps.
That difference in mechanics can also explain their difference as dribblers. As Senior United players, Amad has completed 46.7 percent of his Premier League dribbles compared to only 32.5 percent for Garnacho. “He is (Amad) closer to the ground and having a high pass speed means that he can make adjustments very quickly,” says Dodoo.
Amad (22 years old) and Garnacho (20) are two members of a relatively young united team. Midfielders Toby Collyer (20), Manuel Ugarte (23) and Kobbie Mainoo (19), Plus Center-Back Leny Yoro (19) and Spits Rasmus Hojlund (21) played Academy Football in England or moved from United of United From Other European competitions in the past two seasons.
Those in the club believe that the most difficult part of taking off the senior, Premier League level is the physical requirements (more than the technical/tactical) and subsequent injury risks.
Dodoo says that teams’ need a smart rotation system with those young players. Especially, the more a forward and more a speed trader who is a player, even more reason to have a way to keep them loaded but not overloaded.
Sprint coaches are not new within football. Former team GB Sprinter Darren Campbell worked at MK Dons and with Andriy Shevchenko when he was in Chelsea. Similarly, Leon Reid, another former international sprinter, has worked on the current technology of Brighton players. Three NFL parties-De Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans and Houston Texans all all ‘directors of Speed Development’, although there is a more natural fit for a mechanics/sprint coach there, given the combine and 40-yard dash there from the NFL.
Garnacho has demonstrated his sprint power this season (Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty images)
In his era of specialized coaches, the Premier League is: Hybrid Coach analysis, SET-piece coaches and position-specific coaches. The return on the investment of a coach who can keep players fitter (and they may be able to move better) has the potential to be huge.
Internally, Amorim has been critical of fitness levels and the high intensity numbers of United have been deposited compared to last season.
Walking more (and harder) is not automatically a good thing and requires the context of tactics, game status, opposition style and quality, but as Dodoo states: “The manager’s model is a real high intensity and the players must be conditioned for that. If you are conditioned for this way of training with one manager, the next manager must (mean) the conditioning of the team to go up ”.
It is not entirely the same approach that ten hag followed when he let his players run for many kilometers after a road defeat against Brentford in August 2023 (to show them how much they were ‘outran’). However, availability is the best possibility, and United must improve there if they want to implement the style that Amorim wants, let alone reverse their season.
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(Top photo: Manchester United Training this month; by Zohaib Alam/MUFC/Manchester United via Getty Images)