Eye-patches influenced by boxers – Football’s latest unorthodox training method as Italy U21 players pictured in bizarre session

One U21 squad has recently been pictured wearing eye-patches in training, as the Italian stars of the future look to nail down the latest unusual training trick.

The Azzurrini youngsters were preparing for a UEFA European Championship qualifier against Sweden on Friday when their coach Silvio Baldini introduced the bizarre idea.

Davide Bartesaghi, Luca Lipani and Tommaso Martinelli were among the players snapped with one eye covered, a technique previously used by Baldini during his time at Italian second division side Pescara.

It is understood that training with vision out of only one eye can improve speed, reflexes and players’ peripheral vision, while it can also reduce fatigue, with players having to concentrate extra hard during sessions.

The technique helped Baldini guide his former club to promotion from Serie C last season – showing that there is a method to his madness – and last year he revealed that the idea was influenced by boxing.

“I was coaching Catania, I went to see a boxer in Syracuse. He used bandages, I was intrigued and did some research. And I started to propose that method too.”

The eye-patches certainly worked for Baldini at one point in his career, but these quirky methods have not always been so successful.

During the 2021/22 Premier League campaign, Mikel Arteta attempted to combat Liverpool’s noisy Anfield atmosphere by playing the club’s iconic ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ song over speakers during Arsenal training.

Arsenal had hoped to end a 10-year wait without a top-flight win at Anfield, using the technique to prevent feeling overwhelmed.

At the time, Arteta told Amazon Prime Video: “The game (a previous match at Anfield) was going there and suddenly I could only see red shirts flying around.

“The game is passing all over me and I cannot react. People think, ‘What is he doing?’ and I’m like, ‘I cannot do it’. Emotionally, physically, I cannot cope. Everything goes too fast. I only had that feeling in my career once and it was at Anfield.”

Since then, Arteta has no doubt taken The Gunners to new heights with the club currently top of the Premier League and favourites to overhaul Arne Slot’s Liverpool side to win the title.

But on that occasion, a heavy 4-0 defeat on Merseyside followed Arteta’s unusual training stunt, which perhaps proved that this particular technique was not so successful.

Thomas Tuchel was appointed Chelsea head coach in January 2021, and during his first week, he began to implement his own strange methods on his struggling squad.

One of those was the use of mini footballs, as opposed to the usual Size 5 balls used in matches.

Playing with the miniature balls supposedly improved control and accuracy, and when the squad returned to training with regular-sized balls, Tuchel introduced small goals to make scoring harder.

Four months later, Tuchel guided The Blues to a second UEFA Champions League title.

Could we be seeing something similar with England, as Tuchel aims to lead The Three Lions to FIFA World Cup glory in 2026?

Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and the rest of Barcelona’s star-studded squad took part in bubble football in a pre-season training session at St. George’s Park ahead of the 2016/17 campaign.

The idea was supposedly to add a fun, team-building element to their preparations for the upcoming season, rather than for technical or tactical reasons.

But it would perhaps help players’ awareness, knowing that at any moment they could be catapulted off the ball.

Barca were flying high after La Liga and Copa del Rey title wins and enjoyed an afternoon taking part in bubble football, which was very much the craze in the summer of 2016.

Jurgen Klopp is a legend at Liverpool for delivering the club’s first Premier League title and a sixth Champions League crown.

But there was some madness behind his success on Merseyside, especially when it came to goalkeepers and Brazilian sensation Alisson.

Alisson himself has gone down as one of the league’s best-ever goalkeepers, and who is to say some of Klopp’s bizarre training methods didn’t help?

To help Alisson adapt to the physical Premier League life upon his arrival, goalkeeping coach John Achterberg challenged him with rugby bags while challenging for high balls in the box.

The idea was that the rugby bag simulated the presence of some of the division’s bulky forwards, which included the likes of Harry Kane, Romelu Lukaku, Aleksandar Mitrovic and Chris Wood.

“It is not really rugby, it is goalkeeper training,” Klopp said at the time. “It is normal goalkeeper training. It makes sense to do it because the six-yard area is rather a proposal than a safety box for a goalkeeper.

“We have these situations in training constantly. When we do set-pieces the box is full with 22 players. Maybe that is a bit much, but 15 certainly.

“It is busy, we do it often so that the goalkeeper gets used to that. It is all about timing.”

Since Klopp left and Slot took over, the Dutchman has introduced some outlandish goalkeeping methods of his own, which include wearing high-tech goggles to limit vision.