Real Madrids fitness coach Antonio Pintus is loved, feared and ever-present

Publish date: 2024-05-05

The sight of fans gathered outside training was a common one throughout Real Madrid’s pre-season tour of the United States this summer.

Crowds would go to great lengths in their attempts to get a photo or autograph from players, but there was one less well-known member of the team singled out for special attention, too.

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“Pintus, Pintus, Pintus!”

Antonio Pintus, Real Madrid’s head physical coach, would greet these calls with an endearing smile. A 60-year-old bald man of modest stature, he is described by those who work with him as an unassuming and sometimes shy person.

But he would still stop to greet supporters, spending some time talking before heading out towards the training pitch. There, his demeanour would entirely transform.

Real’s players adore him, just like the fans, but they also fear him professionally — and Pintus is aware of this. Jude Bellingham summed it up very well in his first week of training in early July. “Pintus loves to kill us,” he said. “I guess that’s his job. But yes, I love him. He’s a great guy.”

Pintus during the 2022 Champions League celebrations (Diego Souto/ Quality Sport Images/Getty Images).

There are two scenes that sum up how widely respected Pintus is. The first dates back to 2017 and involves Juan Carlos I, the King of Spain between 1975 and 2014 (when he abdicated from the throne).

Madrid had just won their 12th European Cup/Champions League in Cardiff and Juan Carlos de Borbon (since stepping down he has been known as ‘King Emeritus’) went down to the dressing room to congratulate then manager Zinedine Zidane and his players, who had beaten Juventus 4-1. Amid the euphoria, the former King asked: “And Pintus, where is he?”

The other scene also took place around Champions League success, but this time after the semi-final comeback victory against Manchester City in 2022. In the dressing room, in a clip posted to social media, Pintus was embraced by a celebrating Luka Modric, who cheered in between kisses: “Pintus style! At the top, at the top! Pintus method!”

🏃 EL MÉTODO PINTUS 🏃
👉 @lukamodric10 👈#APorLa14 pic.twitter.com/fcs1yYjCbN

— Real Madrid C.F. (@realmadrid) May 4, 2022

But some point to the slump often experienced by Madrid after January and attribute it to Pintus’ intense sessions. So what exactly is the ‘Pintus method’? And who is the cult figure behind it? The Athletic explains.

Pintus, the key to getting Madrid’s players in shape in pre-season, is one of the most important figures on head coach Carlo Ancelotti’s staff, along with his son and assistant Davide and Luis Llopis, his goalkeeping coach. He is held in the highest regard at Real Madrid, where he arrived from Lyon in 2016, appointed by Zidane.

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When the Frenchman left as manager in 2018, Julen Lopetegui was appointed and brought his own staff, leaving Pintus in a delicate situation. The club still kept him on the payroll and when Lopetegui was dismissed and replaced by Santiago Solari (who had been managing Real Madrid Castilla, the club’s youthful reserve team) 138 days later, Pintus returned to the limelight, but only for a short time.

Shortly afterwards he joined Antonio Conte’s Inter Milan and Zidane’s return as Madrid boss in March 2019 did not change his plans. The legendary former Real midfielder instead brought in Gregory Dupont, who, like Zidane, left in 2021.

When, by surprise, Real turned to Ancelotti that summer, he was delighted to return and, as a club man, agreed to the suggested appointments of Llopis and Pintus, with president Florentino Perez calling Pintus himself.

Pintus, who is also Italian, had always repeated to his trusted people how much he loved working at Real, in Spain, and especially in the city of Madrid, so he did not hesitate to return.

Pintus leads the way in training (Berengui/vi/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

With very few individual exceptions, under Pintus’ watch, the Madrid squad has arrived in great shape for pre-season, ready to hit the ground running. There are three main reasons for this: the carry-over from the previous campaign, the individualised plans Pintus sends players to follow during their holidays, and the fear they have of returning in poor condition — doing so would mean suffering under the Italian’s whip.

In Pintus’ methodology, technology and data analysis play a very important role: everything is collected, studied and used to inform plans.

One of the tools used this pre-season is a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask that helps staff judge the physical condition of players. The mask is used to record and analyse their oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and, based on their percentages, he can personalise their training programmes. Real posted images of players wearing the masks on their social media channels last month.

For Pintus, the focus of early pre-season training is aerobic preparation. The group does a lot of long runs. As the sessions go by, often two a day, the focus is redirected towards shorter and more explosive efforts. Strength training is also considered important and players’ weights are closely monitored.

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Players to have worked under Pintus have highlighted the importance of technology in his methods. At Sunderland, where he worked under Gus Poyet, who was manager from 2013-2015, he would use GPS devices to track players’ performance. “Antonio was two steps ahead of the rest,” their former centre-back Carlos Cuellar told Spanish newspaper El Mundo last year. “What now seems like the most normal thing seemed really new to me.”

Pintus’ approach is tailored to individual players and positions — for example, Cuellar pointed out how a central defender did not have to run as much as a left-back during the coach’s sessions, reflecting game situations. Poyet suggested there was not one “Pintus method” but that it kept “being adapted and adjusted to the times”.

Bellingham trains with a CPAP mask (Pedro Castillo/Real Madrid via Getty Images)

The Italian has co-authored academic papers studying heart rate responses during small-sided games and the relationship between repeated sprint ability, age and puberty in young players. The latter aimed to help coaches minimise the risk of injury and overtraining in players at different stages of their development.

He also inspires loyalty in his former charges. Zidane, Poyet, France boss Didier Deschamps and the late Gianluca Vialli, who played for and managed Chelsea, all hired Pintus as managers after experiencing his methods as players. His CV includes spells at Juventus, Chelsea, West Ham United and Marseille among other clubs — one source close to him (who, like the others cited in this article, preferred to remain anonymous to protect their position) says he even played in a friendly for Vialli’s Chelsea side in Hong Kong in 2000.

That Pintus is well-liked and respected at Madrid — which goes back even further than his work with this present group under Ancelotti — goes a long way to explaining his near-cult status among the team’s fans. But some claim to have identified a negative knock-on effect in players’ physical performance during the middle of the season owing to his methods.

Normally, the theory goes, Pintus’ teams experience a slump in January, something he and his staff try to combat. Some of those who are, or have been, close to Pintus do say that he is aware of the label given to this dip in form — the ‘Valle Pintusian’ (Pintus Valley).

But a counterargument to that idea would also take into account the atypical nature of that time of year, with very few games played over the winter break and the psychological factor involved as a result of possibly losing some match sharpness.

Vinicius Junior is out with a muscle injury (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Madrid have already lost two key players to anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries this season in goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois and Eder Militao, while Arda Guler is a long-term absentee with a knee injury. After Militao suffered his injury in Madrid’s opening La Liga fixture, The Athletic asked club sources whether they were concerned pre-season training or other preparations might have played a role. They said Courtois and Militao’s injuries were simply down to bad luck, while Ancelotti himself was also asked about what might have caused them.

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Vinicius Junior and Dani Ceballos are also out with muscle injuries, which are more commonly attributed to physical training, although the club have no doubts about Pintus’ work.

“It’s very difficult and complicated to say because with a knee injury, you have to evaluate many things,” Ancelotti said when asked about Militao and Courtois’ ACL problems. “Militao was doing well in terms of strength, Courtois is the same. All the data evaluated these days did not give us any alarm, so I think it was bad luck.”

Away from his work on the training pitch with Madrid, athleticism has marked Pintus’ life and his career. As a child, he wanted to play football, but his father, a worker at Fiat, gave him the following decisive advice: “Go and do running because I don’t think you’re very good at football.”

Pintus did compete as a middle-distance runner at national level, later training a leading judo team in Italy. Those who know him say he enjoyed it because judo players like to suffer in training.

He is also an accomplished skier and in 2003 (when he was working at Monaco), made a gruelling seven-day expedition to the Svalbard islands, a Norwegian archipelago within the Arctic Circle.

At 19, he gave up any serious pursuit of competitive athletics to focus on his education and training. He obtained a university diploma as a physical education teacher in Turin in 1986, with a thesis on marathon running that was recognised with a prize awarded by the Italian Olympic committee. That was the key that opened the door to Juventus in 1991, when he left his job as a teacher at a Catholic school, marking his entrance to the football world.

(Mateo Villalba/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)

In all this time, Pintus has not stopped running. In 2013, he placed 24th in the half marathon at the World Masters. In April, he ran the Madrid Marathon in three hours, 48 minutes and 31 seconds. Ancelotti had asked him to run it a day earlier as an example to the players.

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Having qualified as a PE teacher in France, he obtained a master’s degree in Italy and three years ago completed studies in physiotherapy at Camilo Jose Cela University in Madrid out of a desire to better understand the work of other colleagues at Real. He is currently studying for a doctorate at the Universidad Europea de Madrid in sports sciences.

One source at Valdebebas describes Pintus as “very professional and routine”.

“Every morning he goes for a 9km or so run and, if we travel, he leaves the hotel in the morning to run,” they added. “He is very good and kind. Although he looks like a drill sergeant, he is not. In fact, his way of relating to the players is very friendly.”

Pintus has struggled with German but is fluent in Italian, English, French and Spanish, which allows him to make himself understood and connect with the players, who keep him in mind — even on their holidays.

(Top photos: Getty Images)

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