Malta's preparations in view for the upcoming UEFA Nations League Group D3 matches, both away to Kosovo and Azerbaijan on October 11 and 14 respectively continued with an intense training session at the Training Grounds at Ta' Qali before the Malta delegation departs on a chartered flight to Kosovo on Tuesday afternoon.
Ray Farrugia's technical staff team members of Branko Nisevic, Charles Sciberras, Ronald Vella and Luca Pagani were very much in demand with most of the players having participated during the end-of-week BOV Premier League matches.
The physical side of the athletes falls under the supervision of none other than the experienced Luca Pagani, Head Physical Trainer at the Malta Football Association who drilled the members of the squad in his usual intensive manner over the past two days.
TMI spoke with Luca ahead of these two important commitments for Malta and the physical side of the squad.
"Basically this time round we did not have much time to work on the physical side of the players due to the end-of-the-week BOV Premier Leauge matches, but we performed two very good recovering training session which went well. I am very happy with the physical injury-free condition of our players," stated Pagani
Malta head coach Ray Farrugia during Malta's training session on Monday afternoon. Photos © Domenic Aquilina
TMI also spoke with Malta head coach Ray Farrugia about the squad in general and this is what the Malta coach had to say.
"As you can see we have retained the major part of the players who were within the squad for our first two UNL matches. We have been closely monitoring the form of local players in our domestic competitions and our squad selection reflects the result of all this, via assessments and the performance analysis statistics. All my team has been working relentlessly in order to get our players in the best possible shape for these two upcoming difficult commitments. I am very pleased with the way things are shaping up."
Copyright © Domenic Aquilina/The Malta Independent