Zidane assistant: LaLiga triumph was due to major training changes

Real Madrid assistant coach David Bettoni says a fresh approach to training was key to their LaLiga title triumph.

Bettoni says he and coach Zinedine Zidane discussed the radical change during Spain's coronavirus lockdown.

He explained to L'Equipe: "We both thought, what are we going to do with these months of lockdown and we decided to embark on a new concept of training and looked for a more creative approach.

We saw that our players need a new fresh mental focus and we concentrated on that aspect of things. Many feel we worked exclusively on the physical side of things but that's not how it was, there was a major psychological approach involved.

"The mental side of things also impacts on the physical. First, we prepared our players during the lockdown period and they responded to the methodology of Grégory Dupont and as soon as we could get back to Valdebebas, we organised mini-sessions via video conference.

The key to our success was both on an individual level from the squad and this coupled with a creative approach on dealing with a situation that we'd never come up against before."