Pre-season training at Melbourne Heart FC is in full-swing with Head Coach John van ’t Schip happy with the squads progression so far.

By David Manuca

Pre-season training at Melbourne Heart FC is in full-swing with Head Coach John van -t Schip happy with the squads progression so far.

The team has been working on their physical conditioning for the first few weeks of pre-season, before next week they begin the footballing aspect of training.

The players have been training hard to get into the best physical shape possible before the start of the season.

“Training so far has been going well. We had plans to get every individual player to a certain level and I think we-ve achieved that quite well.”said van-t Schip.

“They-re all working very hard, so that-s a very positive sign, and there are only a few players who are still a little bit behind due to injuries but there is still some catch up time.

“All the other boys are looking quite good now and in-shape to start the footballing pre-season next week.”

Van -t Schip says the squad is looking very prepared and sharp, compared to last season where the team wasn-t as settled.

“If you compare this pre-season to last, where we started much later, the squad looks very prepared and sharp already in this stage of training.” he said.

With the signing of David Williams, Mate Dugandzic and Fred, along with players already in the squad such as Alex Terra, Jason Hoffman, Kamal Ibrahim and Eli Babalj, the amount of options in the attacking-third is sure to cause some selection headaches for van-t Schip.

“We have a lot of options and a lot of mobility in our final third for next season.” he said.

“We still have Fred to join up with the squad and he is one of those players who can feed the other attackers with his great passing and skills.”