This week’s pre-season camp in the Algarve will be “invaluable” for new Aberdeen boss Jimmy Thelin to forge a Dons side who will fight for each other, according to Michael Hart.
With Aberdeen having returned to training at Cormack Park last week, Swedish gaffer Thelin ramped up the Reds’ preparations for the new campaign by taking his players to Portugal on Sunday.
They will remain there until next weekend, and plan to play at least one bounce game against yet-to-be-confirmed opposition before travelling back to the north-east.
Pittodrie youth academy graduate Hart had two spells in the Dons first-team from 1997-2001 and 2003-2008.
Playing under Jimmy Calderwood during his second stint with the club, Hart was part of summer training trips to the Netherlands (2004 and 2005), South Africa (2006) and Egypt (2007).
In the season after the South Africa camp, Calderwood’s Reds secured Uefa Cup football, and following the Egypt visit, in the 2007-08 campaign, got all the way to the last-32 stage, where they played a blockbuster two-legged European tie with Bayern Munich.
Hart thinks pre-season camps abroad are vital to pull the squad together and lay the groundwork for united performances when the competitive action starts.
He said: “It’s really important that you get away.
“Some managers believe it’ll get you fitter quicker, some of them just want you to play against different styles of play, some just want you to get away and just be able to focus on training and not have the school run to do in the morning before you come in.
“But I’m a big believer in the fact it gets you to know your team-mates.”
Hart added: “It used to be there was always a strategy behind these things. Jimmy Calderwood’s strategy was I would always room with Barry Nicholson or Jamie Smith – the guys in front of me as a full-back.
“If I was playing centre-half, I would room with the guy to my left, Andy Considine, or Russell (Anderson).
“If I was playing centre-midfield, I would room with Seve.
“You had that time you were spending in a room with this person. You didn’t get a room to yourself.
“You were sharing two twin beds in a room, training together, working hard together – training two or three times a day. You’d eat together.
“So by the time you went back for the season, you knew this person, you worked for this person and you tried for this person.”
‘You don’t get that if you just stay in Aberdeen’
Hart says this time at close-quarters abroad built a trust which meant the Aberdeen players knew their team-mates would not “dig them out” for making a mistake in the season to come.
He thinks it is harder to build the same relationships staying at home for pre-season, saying: “You become closer as a group – and you don’t get that if you just stay in Aberdeen and do the Monday to Friday training and you play on Saturday.
“Yeah, you go into the training ground and there’s a bit of banter there for half-an-hour, you go out, you train, you finish and then you go home.
“Being on these trips, you’re stuck on the buses and stuck in the hotel with nothing to do, you’re making up games and competitions and quizzes just to keep each other going.”
Trip will be ‘paramount’ for Thelin – Hart
Hart knows new manager Thelin and his coaching staff will also be using training and any friendlies in Portugal to further understand the capabilities of the Aberdeen squad they have inherited, as they attempt to lead the Dons back up the Premiership table next season.
Two of Thelin’s summer signings, centre-half Gavin Molloy and goalkeeper Dimitar Mitov, are among the squad in the Algarve.
“As long as you don’t focus too much on the results when you’re away, and more on the performances, because you are trying people in new positions, and trying new formations,” Hart said.
“I think it’s paramount for any new manager, taking on a new team – you have to be given pre-season, bringing your own players in, getting through pre-season, taking your players away as a group.
“If he’s only going to have one or two years, like managers are getting at the moment, he has to be given the best opportunity.
“If I was a manager, I’d be asking for the time with my players to be able to do that.”
Egypt trip: ‘Battered off a pub team’ and dented beers from car crash
Aberdeen’s pre-season trips under Calderwood didn’t go off without hitch.
The Egypt trip in the summer of 2007, especially, was infamous for – among other things – extreme heat, and poor training and playing surfaces.
These factors contributed to an opening 2-0 friendly loss to a side named Arab Contractors.
Though Arab Contractors were described as “technically very good” in Aberdeen’s official club match report, Hart’s recollection of the opposition is slightly different.
He said: “It was roasting, on a bobbly pitch. We couldn’t trap a bag of spanners, honestly – we were so unacclimatised.
“We couldn’t get going. We didn’t know what we were doing and couldn’t handle the heat.
“Anyway, we got battered off a pub team.”
The Dons’ second friendly against Al-Aluminum a few days later also ended in defeat, though they would go on to beat Al-Ittihad in an ill-tempered clash and then Al-Etesalat before leaving Egypt.
Before the second match, there was a scary incident when Hart and Jamie Smith – who Calderwood rested for the game – were involved in a car crash.
“He said to us: ‘If you want to go and get a few beers for after the game tonight, you and the guys can have a few beers,” Hart explained.
“One of the drivers took us to an off-licence, we picked up a few beers and put them in the boot of his car.
“(On the way back) he decides to pull across a five-lane highway without looking or indicating, and a car’s clipped him from the back, spun us out of control and put us into the oncoming traffic on the other side of the road.
“Me and Jamie are in the back, and he’s screaming – we’ve been bounced around.
“I can’t remember if we ended up climbing out of the car window, but the guy wouldn’t let us out for some reason – probably because we were on a five-lane highway!
“But the car was absolutely battered, and when we got back to the hotel, everybody’s like: ‘Are you alright?’
“Later on that night, after the game, the guy actually brought the beers to us.
“Every can of beer had a dent in it!
“The guys have played the game and they’re cheers’ing the beers – they were all laughing that these beers were absolutely squashed, battered and bruised.”
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