Day One Diary: Ben Chilwell
It’s an amazing resort here, from the hotel to even just the training pitches, which are really good. The weather is amazing and it’s just a lovely area, the view is wicked. It’s good to be away with a bunch of people that you get on with. It’s a quiet, secluded area, which is the best place to come to because there’s no outside noise or distractions. You just come here to train and get on with what you have to do.
It’s been a good summer for me. The experience of being away with England was good for me. All the games you play for England are important, but that was the first one where it was a semi-final that I’d been involved in. It was the same for a few of the boys, so it was good to get that kind of experience leading into next summer's European Championships. We needed that, to get used to wanting to win those high-profile games in hostile stadiums against big teams.
After we played the Netherlands and Switzerland, I went away with a few of my mates to Ibiza and then went to LA. I did some training in LA for a week and since then I’ve been in England. I went back to where my mum and dad both live in Milton Keynes, and I spent 10 or 11 days with them there. That’s where all my mates live too. I saw a lot of them, which was nice, because I don’t get to see them too much, and they’re my mates from school. We went for food and went to the cinema, just chilled stuff, which was nice because it was good to relax before coming back here.
I’ve been training while I’ve been back in England as well, and I feel a lot better. It’s important to get back into doing fitness work, otherwise you’re going to lose your fitness pretty quickly, especially when you’re coming back late into Leicester. I came back a week after everyone else, so after my first day back, when everyone else has been training for a week, I needed to be fit already because the lads were a week ahead of me. It was necessary that I did a lot of running to keep on top of my fitness over the summer.
I feel like I’m on par with everyone else. Today was my first day back, but I felt fit and I felt good and it was good to get back on the balls. I’ve not kicked a ball for five weeks, so it’s good to get back. It’s nice to be back with the boys and seeing everyone yesterday was nice. We’re all looking forward to getting on with the games now.
There are a lot of younger lads that are with us here too, and the new signings as well. Everyone wants to impress, and although it was only my first day today, the tempo was very high and the standard was really good as well. That can sometimes be quite rare in the first few weeks of pre-season, but it was really high. I heard that last week that the lads were playing football from day one, which is good, because you get a lot of football fitness. Running is one thing, but fitness with the footballs is what’s going to get us in the best shape for the matches.
When you come to somewhere like this, you want to enjoy yourself, but you also take it seriously and do everything you can do get the best out of it for yourself. Then, when you’ve got downtime, it’s nice to enjoy yourself. It’s not every day that you get to come to places like this, so away from the football, we’ve been chilling by the pool and been on the putting green playing some mixed doubles. Jonny and Callum won it last year, and yesterday, a few of the lads weren’t too bad at all.
We’ve got a good week ahead of us, and we’re all really looking forward to it.
See you soon,
Chilly.