This summer, Rutgers hosted an English Premier League club as part of Brighton Hove & Albion’s preseason tour. It was an opportunity for Jim McElderry to not just watch the tactics of one of the best clubs in the world, but to check-in on the little things that helped Brighton to a successful campaign last season.
Brighton & Hove Albion, who finished sixth in the league last year on 62 points, participated in a preseason tour of the United States along with several other English clubs..They participated in a preseason match at Red Bull Arena against Newcastle and while in New Jersey, they used Rutgers and the Miller Soccer Complex as a training base.
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For McElderry, the men’s soccer head coach, it was an exciting few days to see the ins and outs of how a Premier League club operates.
“Obviously, the quality of the players is fun to be around watching, you know, Premier League players train and play but I think watching their staff work was maybe more interesting to us in terms of how they used our facility and pre and post stuff that they did with their players,” McElderry said on a conference call this week to preview the season.
“Nothing that is rocket science but really interesting to watch how much care they give individual players – especially guys coming back from injury, how they work with the strength coaches.
“A lot to take away and even just the sessions they play some really good soccer as you know, and so watching them work and how they kind of build sessions was a lot of fun. Again, it’s, it’s not rocket science, but it’s just little subtle things that they’re doing and how they look after players. We’re lucky to have them here. It was just fun for our group to be around them and learn from them and have some of our players watch some of their sessions was a lot of fun for everybody.”
Rutgers is coming off a very strong 2022 season that saw them win the Big Ten Tournament. They made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2015 and won their first conference tournament since 1997.
The Scarlet Knights have their first preseason game on Saturday against Drexel. They open the season on Aug. 24 with a non-conference game at Delaware.
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