Author: Oscar Mendez.
When I returned from China where I was working,
several colleagues of mine and Friends mentioned to me there was a famous coach
here in Uruguay, coach of one of the most important clubs here and who was also
in charge of coaching courses in the University, said publicly that “tactical
periodization can not be applied because in South America we don´t have the
material conditions to do so”.
First I want to make it clear that even though I know
this colleague personally, I don´t have a personal relationship with him and in
no way this is based on a personal attack but rather on a different
professional point of view.
Understanding of this Methodology.
Like I mentioned before, it is not possible to
understand, a methodology like T.P., created by Professor Frade if we do not
begin to realize that it is created
under a different Paradigm (Paradigm of Complexity) that traditional education
where we have learned before which is
the foundation of all learning done in primary, middle and University schools.
We will not understand it if we see it from traditional point of view.
Doing this from the Cartesian Paradigm.
I think that I mentioned this before, when we begin
learning with Professor, and also this was mentioned by the Professors teaching
us, when they studied with him for the first time, we begin reading and analizing
authors that are not sport related but rather scientific disciplines based on
the Paradigm of Complexity that have little to do with Football or sports. This
is something that many coaches complain in the beginning when studying with
him. That it had little to do with specific training. Expecting maybe they give
you a booklet with secret recipes or exercises.
This is the reason.
When we study with Professor Frade, the first thing
that we begin to study and discuss is regarding this, about the change in
Paradigm because “this is the tool that
allows us to see another reality, to see the game from complexity….like a whole”.
If we really pretend to learn, understand and apply it, we must read and study a lot,
it is not enough to read a couple of books and think that we understand and
know how to apply it.
I have seen things on magazines in English that have
very little to do with T.P.
We must take into consideration it belongs to a Paradigm different than before, and once we
realize this we will begin to understand it very differently, and this will
allow us to see it from complexity …and
in my opinion how the game of football-soocer really is.
Besides the theory, in my case have read many books in
Spanish and Portuguese and hundreds of monographs or papers, am still learning.
In other words, the learning process is never over because this reality is
never over or constant, but dynamic, changing all the time. It is always
adjusting to new scientific data.
There are no shortcuts.
It is not a fashion, it is not nor will be temporary.
We see sport journalists, obviously expressing
themselves without any foundation, saying that there are coaches that are older but they
are discarded by clubs because they don´t use fancy terms that are used in
modern football. (recent example of Boca
Jrs. Head coach Miguel Angel Russo).
It really has very little to do. The problem is that
the athletes that played at higher level can notice this immediately because
inevitable , specially when you don’t win, will always be comparing coaches and
processes.
I want to stress that this is not linear, the age of
the coach has very little to do with how he/she sees the game and its training,
from complexity , but rather the coaches’
mental structure that allow him/her to do so.
It is worth
noting two aspects on this subject:
There are many Young coaches that repeat things they
hear on videos or conferences of famous coaches without understanding what
these terms really mean, and why and how are trained and they try to do this to
fool people in sport direction in different clubs to find Jobs and place
themselves on working market. Later they last very Little or are fired since
they do not have a solid base or understanding of the game or its training:
They tend to make more difficult things that are
simple and things that have a high level of complexity, they don´t see them as
they are.
As Professor Frade says one thing is complexity,
another is difficulty.
Sometimes we may use them as synonyms but they are
really not.
An exercise of 3v2 can be very simple, but its
complexity can be rather high that classify it this way.
Many coaches over-complicate things that are really
very simple and they don’t see or recognize complexity that is different from
difficulty.
A leaf that has fallen from a tree is not the same as
that same leaf when it is a part of that same tree, where it is a system within
another system. That is complexity.
The other aspect is that because they see the game
from a mechanical-divided and disassociated view, are unable to understand and
teach the game to their players from a complex point of view and as a whole.
The footballer maybe is not able to speak openly about
these things because of intellectual deficiencies for example, but this does
not imply that they don’t notice or they are dumb. We have to remember that
Intelligence is not merely the intellectual capacity but rather a set of
capacities although many people still
seem to think so.
As a colleague and friend told me once, “They don´t
understand the game, let alone are able to teach it to their players”.
What has happended in the last decades, this transformation
that in my opinion was generated in Spain, Portugal and later Germany is not a
fashion trend, but rather a different “perception”
of understanding of the game and its training. As Romario use to say “of being
able to see the game with someone else´s eyes , the eyes of Johan Cruyff”, but
rather I would add the eyes of complexity and as a whole.
The isolated date in football does not matter any
more.
It doesn´t matter anymore how many kmts my team has
run, how much percentage of possession or Quantitavee data or numbers , but
rather the relation and influence this data has in the game.
I will give and example that happened to me when I was
working in Spain of seeing the game and its training from the old Paradigm to
the new:
I once worked with a Physical Trainer of same club bu different division that I was told me once
that, “He knew that his players ran 12 kmts of average per game, so he tried
for his players to run this distance in the trainings, in the park, the fastest
way possible because this would enable to be closer to victory than losing”. Of
course his team had a lot of problems during the season and many injuries.
This is a clear example of seeing the game from two
different paradigms.
That his players were not doing on an intermittent way
(like in a game), that were working different energetic systems, re-utilization
of lactate, that they did this on a different complexity, different positions
on the pitch the effort was different (amount of sprints or amount of low
intensity running for example), with a lower emotional stress, and all the
possible changes that can occur in a game (numerical advantage, disadvantage,
be winning, losing etc).
It is not by
accident that most Premier League teams apply this methodology or similar
methodologies.
It is not random that most coaches come from these 3
countries I mentioned above (Portugal, Spain, Germany) and the fastest we open
our minds to these things, the more time it will take us to catch up (in other
continents) and be competitive again.
Some consideration for its application.
What generated this article was the commentary by the
colleagues I mentioned above and that many colleagues and friends knowing that I was studying with Professor Frade and his
people (Professor Maria Vieira, Jorge Reis, Filipe Morais, Miguel Lopes among
others), told me about this Professor saying T.P. could not be applied here or
really in poor places like South America where we do not have the same training
facilities and materials..
And it sounded rather harsh because this “colleague”
did not know that we had already applied it in youth/Grassroots football here
in a 1st Division Club (Montevideo Wanderers F.C.) from the under 16
and under 15 in the 2014 and 2015 seasons with kids born in 1999,2000 and 2001
and where many were able to play in the U-20 National Team of Uruguay and also
several were sold to Europe, Mexico, Brazil and the U.S. and many of them are
playing in the 1st division squad.
Applying T.P. is more difficult in these ages because
we have to understand that these ages are the ages of development specially
hormonally (Testosterone and Growth hormone), and we have to pay special
attention to Physical Dimension at these ages.
If we were able to do it with relative success in this
age, how can it be done with kids closer to or in a professional level?
As professor says when we train T.P. we must train
specifically, it is not training in Camp Nou or Santiago Bernabeu or Man Utd
ptch but similar to where we are going to play.
Prof. Frade mentions what are team is going to do in
the match and what we have to do to neutralize the opponent.
You don’t need anything special rather than a space
similar to where you are going to play, balls, bibs, cones, and very little
else.
We train how we are going to play, this is not done
running around the pitch, in a park or a beach.
Intensities are similar to how we are going to play.
We apply this type of training under several
Methodologic Principles (Principle of Horizontal Alternance in Specifity) which
will shape our week, and other principles like Complex Progression and
Propensities. All of this done in specificity.
If we
can not train like we are going to play, we will not be able to play correctly.
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