Former Manchester United assistant manager Rui Faria has explained why he made the decision to stop using GPS to track players' data during training sessions at Carrington.
Faria, 47, served as Jose Mourinho's assistant at Old Trafford for much of the latter's tenure as manager between the summer of 2016 and December 2018. Faria left at the end of the 2017/18 campaign, just a few months before Mourinho was axed.
It was reported at the time that United were the only club in the Premier League not using GPS to monitor players' numbers in training and it was a decision that was widely criticised. GPS vests have become a staple in footballers' wardrobes and are considered to be just as important as their boots and shirts.
READ MORE: Martial makes admission about United's performance vs City
However, Faria was not as keen to use them as most other coaches are, despite the GPS vests measuring important data, both in training and on matchdays. He has now revealed that he made the decision to remove them from training at United, admitting that he believed he did not need them to measure whether or not a player was thriving during training sessions.
Faria, speaking on the TGG Podcast, said: "First of all, I have nothing against GPS, but you cannot reduce performance to GPS. Today, GPS is a good tool, especially if you don't understand anything about the physiology of the game.
"There is a huge tendency to have GPS controlling the sessions. You have sessions where sport scientists go on the pitch and stop the coach from coaching, because the numbers are going over the numbers they have as a reference. This is so ridiculous that everyone is losing the logic of coaching. At that moment we felt it was good for us not to use it.
"We knew things that had happened in the club in the past, so the decision came from that. Also, it was a tool we felt we didn't need to use because of our experience and knowledge of the game."
READ NEXT:
