West Ham are into their second week of pre-season, having travelled to Evian in France on Monday after a week spent in Scotland.
Not all of the squad are back just yet, with the likes of Declan Rice, Jarrod Bowen, Tomas Soucek and Nayef Aguerd all given extended leave following their international duties at the beginning of June.
But there’s still a large presence of first-team stars who are back and working hard to get themselves ready for the new season.
And two stars, in particular, look very, very sharp already.
West Ham posted a video on their official Instagram feed on Tuesday, which showed an epic duel between Michail Antonio and Kurt Zouma.
Antonio is tasked with trying to beat the defender from a standing start, with Zouma obviously attempting to defend against him.
With a fair amount of quick footwork to begin with, Antonio makes a break for it by nutmegging Zouma, and he looks to have succeeded in beating him before Zouma recovers quickly to win the ball back with a sliding tackle.
It’s a brilliant insight into just how sharp the players are at this early stage of pre-season and certainly encouraging to see it ahead of what is expected to be another long season with potentially more than 50 fixtures to play across four competitions.
Have a watch of the video below…
View this post on Instagram
