With Alonso sorted, Zhao Zhao's assistant Coach team for next season was complete.
Breswell, Alan Tate, and Alonso would definitely meet the first-team's needs, allowing Zhao Zhao to be more relaxed.
Of course, in addition to assistant Coaches who could help Zhao Zhao with daily training and advise on match tactics, a team also needed more positions to be truly perfect.
Among these positions, the one Zhao Zhao currently needed least was a scout.
After all, as a transmigrator, Zhao Zhao possessed future player information that made his judgment hundreds of times more accurate than the best scouts in the world.
"My eyes are the ruler!"
So, the club's existing scouts were sufficient, and there was no need to expand the scouting network, which meant this part of the budget could be saved.
Next was the Goalkeeper Coach.
This part was also not very urgent.
The current Goalkeeper Coach was named Tucker; he was not brought in by David Moyes, and in fact, he had already been with Sunderland for two years.
And in these two years, he had done well at Sunderland, with Pickford improving and growing rapidly under his training.
On a side note, the goalkeeper position was also the one Zhao Zhao was least worried about right now.
In his previous life, after Sunderland was relegated, Pickford, for the sake of his rising career, transferred to Everton and gradually became the England National Team's number one goalkeeper there.
But now, Sunderland remained in the Premier League, and Pickford, as a child who entered Sunderland's youth academy at eight years old, naturally wouldn't consider a transfer.
It could also be said that Pickford was currently the only player in the Sunderland squad who might reach world-class status in the future, so Zhao Zhao would certainly entrust him with important responsibilities.
In short, the Goalkeeper Coach could also be temporarily skipped; Zhao Zhao needed to focus his time and energy on more important positions.
What was more important?
That would be the Fitness Coach.
It is well known that today's world football is developing in a direction of "mad running."
Whether it was Klopp's Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool, Diego Simeone's Atletico Madrid, or Guardiola's Manchester City, all focused on high-pressing in the attacking third, or even full-field pressing.
And to ensure players could maintain high-quality running for ninety minutes, or even 120 minutes, throughout a match, their physical fitness became especially crucial.
Therefore, big teams placed great importance on physical training, usually equipping their teams with two Fitness Coaches; Real Madrid even had three.
This way, some Fitness Coaches specialized in strength training, while others focused on aerobic training, making the approach more professional.
Moreover, a good Fitness Coach could formulate detailed training plans for all players in the entire team during the summer training period, record all detailed data for analysis, and then conduct targeted supplementary training.
For example, a player's daily running distance, sprint distance, number of sprints, time to fatigue, changes in physical fitness after supplementary training…
In this way, players' physical fitness could be gradually improved and made into a bodily function that allowed them to sustain combat throughout a long League season.
Ordinary Fitness Coaches, however, often only managed superficial improvements, making players seem good enough for upcoming matches.
But if a match was exceptionally intense, and the schedule was long, their true state would immediately be revealed!
This was why some teams could remain vibrant even in the late stages of the League, while others showed signs of fatigue, suffered numerous injuries, and even collapsed directly!
Therefore, for Zhao Zhao, finding one or two reliable Fitness Coaches was extremely important.
In a sense, this might even be more important than the assistant Coach team, as Zhao Zhao himself understood tactics and training, but he truly didn't understand physical training…
And for "Fan Zhao Zhao," who was familiar with world football, when it came to Fitness Coaches, two names were unavoidable.
One was Pintus, and the other was Buenaventura.
Pintus, that little bald man, was of course incredibly impressive.
During his time at Real Madrid, he revitalized players in their thirties, making them able to run tirelessly across the field and sprint in the final moments of matches, which earned Real Madrid the nickname "unbeatable in the last 20 minutes" at the time.
Real Madrid's successive victories in the Champions League in recent years, and becoming the undisputed "King of the Champions League," can largely be attributed to Pintus.
As for Buenaventura, he was Guardiola's personal Fitness Coach, having helped Barça as early as the Rijkaard era, turning players into high-pressing machines capable of fluid Tiki-Taka.
No matter if Guardiola was at Barça, Bayern, or Manchester City, he always brought Buenaventura with him; it could be said that Buenaventura was one of Guardiola's most trusted individuals.
It was precisely because of Buenaventura's strict daily demands that Manchester City's players could run a step faster than others on the field, ultimately achieving dominance in the Premier League and the historic treble.
However…
At this point, these two names could only be mentioned in passing.
Because at this time, Pintus was already at Real Madrid, and Buenaventura was already at Manchester City; it was impossible to poach either of them.
How could a small Sunderland possibly compete with Real Madrid and Manchester City for personnel?
"Fortunately, I have alternatives," Zhao Zhao was already on his way to his destination.
And his target for this trip was also in Spain, which meant it was along the way.
One of them was named Lafuente.
In the 2018-19 season, Granada, then playing in the Segunda División, set a record for Spanish professional football since data collection began: throughout the entire season, they only had five instances of players suffering injuries.
What does this concept mean? It's worth noting that the three major traditional ailments in football—Real Madrid's soleus, Barça's groin, and Bayern's adductor—each occurred more frequently in a single season than this number.
Within Granada, they attributed the main credit to Fitness Coach Víctor Lafuente.
Lafuente's "secret recipe" was to add a special technique to training that resembled massage therapy: using various different devices to vibrate easily injured areas and surrounding muscles of players to help reorganize neural pathways.
The effect was outstanding!
Of course, Lafuente was not the only Fitness Coach in European football using this technique.
Many teams had also been researching this technique in recent years, but few could control the intensity and range of vibrations as well as he could.
So, if he could be secured, it would greatly reduce the burden of injuries on his players!
Hmm, it would also be like signing a masseur and half a team doctor—a good deal!
The other was named Sergi Perez.
His older brother was also a football Fitness Coach named Gabriel Jesus Perez, who was currently part of Pochettino's Tottenham team.
These two brothers often communicated and exchanged ideas, jointly discussing how to continuously use new technologies to optimize traditional physical training.
Sergi Perez excelled at using big data for analysis, then formulating different training plans for each player based on various data such as running distance, intensity of confrontations, acceleration, deceleration inertia, and combining it with the Coach's tactical arrangements.
"Choosing to press frantically at the start, or choosing to strike later, actually requires different physical fitness," he said in an interview.
It could be said that such a Fitness Coach also perfectly met Zhao Zhao's needs.
Therefore, Zhao Zhao's trip to Spain this time, in addition to securing Alonso, had the top priority of bringing these two Spaniards back with him!