ITALIAN COACHES FOCUS ON FITNESS

The Italian coaches have provided new thoughts about the aspect of fitness in the modern game. The lessons, though, that the instructors were teaching Wednesday to 173 youths ages 6-17 at the Fort Collins Soccer Complex weren't focused on how to best make those maneuvers but on the thought process that goes into finding the best solution to the problem presented. That, Davide Corti said, is the purpose of the Milan Junior Camps - a series of youth camps throughout the world run each summer by AC Milan, one of the world's top professional teams.

"Our program is to create one thinking player," said Corti, who spent 11 years playing professionally in Italy and now works for AC Milan running camps and identifying prospective players. "That means we have a thinking coach, so it should be a situation in which the guys use the brain all the time, and they can find the right solution when they play.