The wheels on Josh Doig’s plane had barely kissed Italian tarmac before he was whisked off to the Alps for a lung-pumping, leg-burning pre-season training camp with his new team-mates.
“They said to me if you sign, you can go home, pack a bag, come back,” laughs the Scotsman, reflecting on his arrival at Hellas Verona in July 2022. “I was expecting to be drip fed into it.
“But literally I signed, then two hours [drive] straight up to the mountains, not speaking the language – it was terrifying, but after a few days I loved it.”
The ritiro pre-campionato – translated as pre-season retreat – is something of an Italian tradition.
Clubs have long swapped hot and humid summers for fresh mountain air and picturesque surroundings in the north of the country, spending weeks preparing for the new season at high-altitude camps.
“You have almost six weeks off with your family and then 17 days away,” adds left-back Doig, now with Sassuolo in Serie A and speaking from his fourth such retreat, this one in the quiet Alpine village of Ronzone.
“When you’re in the mountains it’s just head down and work hard. You feel dead on your feet every day but it is good because you know you are getting something out of it.
“It is a shock to the system but it gets you right back in the swing of things with your fitness and the football way of mind.”
While many clubs, particularly those in the Premier League, now opt for lucrative global tours, the ‘ritiro’ remains relatively unscathed heritage in Serie A.
“Every player has grown up with this kind of tradition,” explains Genoa sporting director Marco Ottolini. “Maybe we have more mountains than other nations!”
This summer, only AC Milan ventured outside Europe, playing in Hong Kong and Australia, with several clubs setting up retreats at their own training bases and 12 still making a trip to the slopes. Antonio Conte’s Napoli are even doing it twice.
“You have better air, oxygen,” says Gokhan Inler, technical director at Udinese, who have made a short hop across the border to Austria. “You are more controlled with food and sleep. It helps build the group, new players come in faster.”
