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Ten Hag protégé Strieder: Man Utd manager more extreme than Guardiola; players like chess pieces

Former Bayern Munich midfielder Rico Strieder has recalled playing for Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag.

Strieder was coached by Ten Hag as a player with Bayern II and FC Utrecht.

He told Goal: "After the first training session with him I thought: I hardly moved. Ten Hag made you tired in your head, not in your legs. When we played eleven against eleven, he stopped the training continuously to grab someone and have him move two metres left or right. After the next pass, he would stop again to push the next player two metres further. We felt like pieces on a chess board.

"For us it was completely new and completely insane. But we soon realised pretty quickly that it made us better, both as a team and individuals.

"When he had the time, Ten Hag watched Pep Guardiola's training sessions.

"He tried to contact him every day. I don't know what Guardiola thought about that at the time. Their relationship intensified when Ten Hag started to achieve success at Ajax."

In any case, Ten Hag took in detail what he saw at Bayern.

"Guardiola and Ten Hag had a similar vision and comparable exercises. But Ten Hag's tactical training was much more extreme. With Guardiola, an exercise lasted maybe ten minutes, with Ten Hag an hour.

"Ten Hag banned mobile phones from one hour from the start of the warm-up. Nobody was allowed to joke, everyone had to focus."

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