Behind every elite sporting success is a snarling trainer with a whip.
In the case of Atlético Madrid, they have Óscar Ortega, known as ‘El Profe’, ‘The
Professor’.
He is a short, 60-year-old Uruguayan and he has been vital to all of the club’s successes
since Diego Simeone took over as head coach.
In the words of Mickey Goldmill, the fictional trainer of Rocky Balboa, to crap thunder you
need to eat lightening.
Ortega would be a big believer in this.
As Atlético’s fitness coach, Ortega is the man responsible for making sure that Simeone’s
team are able to last a whole demanding season.
Given that the club’s financial resources pale in comparison to some other clubs, Atleti
must compensate by being able to run an extra few hundred metres per game.
Additionally, their style of football sometimes sees them play predominantly without the ball,
a position in which elite fitness is necessary to maintain team structure and to still have
the energy to break when opportunities arise.
When Simeone arrived in 2011, he brought Ortega with him.
The pair had first met when Ortega was the Atlético fitness coach under Gregorio Manzano
during the 2003/04 season, when Simeone was a player at the club.
So impressed was the Argentine with his fellow South American that when he launched his own
coaching career at Racing Club de Avellaneda in 2006, he called Ortega and asked him to
work as his fitness coach.
They’ve been together ever since, working throughout Argentina, in Italy and eventually
moving to the Spanish capital.
Ortega’s background is extensive, having worked in far-flung places such as Mexico,
Colombia and Japan, before starting to train LaLiga sides at the turn of the century, starting
at Sevilla.
While he has a football background, his main source of income during his early coaching
career was rugby, which he taught at the British College in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.
As he began to focus more and more on football, he continued to turn to rugby for tips and
tricks on how to keep footballers just as fit and tough as the rugby players he’d
previously coached.
“There are things from rugby that are transferrable, like knowing where it’s good to pressure,
how to tackle and how to work as a team,” he once explained in an interview with El
País.
Putting his fitness regime under the microscope, there are some orthodox elements to what Ortega
does, as well as some very unconventional ones.
Perhaps foremost amongst them is his summer camps, which players have described as “a
living hell”.
In pre-season, Atlético always spend some time on retreat, usually in Segovia just outside
of Madrid.
There, the Uruguayan puts the players through 14-hour days of running, running and more
running, with just a few breaks for meals in between.
The players are made to run up and down the hills of the local golf course, past the bushes
which the veterans point to as a secret spot for a quick exhaustion-induced vomit, and
all of this under the gruelling summer sun.
Ortega doesn’t allow for any slackers and the newcomers are often shocked, having never
been put through anything quite like this before.
Like most fitness coaches, he leads by example and joins in significant chunks of these runs.
Even at 60, he is as fit as a fiddle.
Ortega’s tactical input is also valued, with Simeone allowing the Uruguayan to design
custom fitness sessions based on the tendencies of the upcoming opponent.
He even makes sure training sessions are as game-like as possible, with few stoppages
between each drill.
When it comes to making substitutions, Ortega’s input is valued too, as he knows better than
anyone else which players have, as the cliché goes, fresh legs.
He’ll be on the sidelines with the players from the 46th minute onwards to put them through
their stretches and to make sure that whoever is selected to enter the fray is truly ready
to do so.
This is partly why Atlético players suffer so few muscle injuries.
Nobody crosses that white line feeling stiff.
Ortega’s most important contribution, though, is in the general cardiovascular fitness of
the squad.
The hard miles put in on the golf courses of Segovia help, but their ability to keep
this rhythm up all season is unparalleled when compared to other elite European sides
with a high number of games.
He is the reason they had the energy to sustain a Barcelona siege on the final day of the
triumphant 2013/14 season.
He is the reason they were able to compete on all fronts in the 57 matches of the 2015/16
season.
He is the reason they were able to thwart Arsenal in the first leg of the 2017/18 Europa
League semi-finals, even though they played 80 minutes with 10 men.
He is the reason for Atlético Madrid’s third lung.