Autor: Oscar Mendez.
Un lugar para discutir sobre el fútbol y su entrenamiento.
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
Thursday, September 1, 2022
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Wednesday, August 3, 2022
Monday, July 25, 2022
Thursday, June 30, 2022
Monday, June 20, 2022
Sunday, June 5, 2022
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Cybernetics, Cesarean Sections and Soccer’s Most Magnificent Mind
PORTO, Portugal — There is an office at the end of a quiet corridor on
the ground floor of the sports faculty at the University of Porto. It is not
the sort of place that attracts much foot traffic, and it is not decorated as
if it is intended to do so.
The room’s
occupant, Vítor Frade, is retired from the teaching post he held at the
university for more than three decades. He keeps the office, though, as a
convenient place to receive the steady stream of visitors who come from across
the world to pick his brain, seek his advice or simply hear him talk.
Over the
course of his long career, Frade achieved no small academic success, but he
could not be described as famous, not in the sense that soccer usually means
it. Fans do not sing his name in stadiums, nor do they ask him for autographs
in the street.
He was not a
player of any great note. He has never managed a club. Instead, Frade, 73, is
that rarest of things: one of soccer’s most noteworthy theorists.
His great
contribution to the sport is tactical periodization, an approach to management
that is often characterized — much to his evident frustration — as a coaching
style. “It is not a method,” he says, almost as soon as he sits down. “It is a
methodology. You have a methodology so that you don’t need methods.” The last
word is issued with disdain.
To Frade, his
approach is a management philosophy, a personal dogma and a belief system
rolled into one. It is a way of thinking more than a way of playing, one
conceived and crafted in this office, at this university, but that can now
claim devotees around the world.
Its most famous evangelist is José Mourinho, who deployed it to
considerable success at Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid, and who now hopes
it can revive Manchester United. But Mourinho is not alone. Most of the great
Portuguese coaching diaspora carry some of Frade’s imprint: André Villas-Boas
and Vítor Pereira most directly, from the time they spent at F.C. Porto, but
also Monaco’s Leonardo Jardim and Hull City’s Marco Silva at one or more
removes.
Then there
are the foreign adherents, the managers and coaches whose ideas draw to a
greater or lesser extent on Frade’s work. Brendan Rodgers, the coach of Celtic,
became convinced of the approach’s value while working under Mourinho early in
his career. Eddie Jones, the Australian coach of England’s rugby team, is a
convert, too.
In recent
months alone, Frade has welcomed, among others, visitors from Australia,
Brazil, England and Scandinavia. Every so often, with the help of a friend, he
puts together an email blast for anyone who has expressed an interest in his
work. It goes out, he said, to 542 people, including Mourinho.
The emails contain
poems composed by Frade — Pepijn Lijnders, a former Porto coach now working at
Liverpool, shares them with the Brazilians Philippe Coutinho and Lucas Leiva —
but also “articles I have read, interviews with interesting coaches, book
recommendations and summaries.” Frade is as likely to include a paper on
robotics or neuroscience as one on soccer itself, the product of a brain
fizzing and whirring, its synapses forever fusing links between unrelated
thoughts.
His answer to
the question “What is tactical periodization?” for example, starts with a
discourse on the structure of a cell, takes in cesarean sections, where
alligators might live in the Mississippi, chameleons and quantum mechanics, and
ends, no small number of hours later, with a discussion of the principles of
cybernetics.
“He is a living, breathing genius,” said José Tavares, the head of Porto’s
youth academy and a student of periodization drafted now as Frade’s
hard-pressed translator. “He does not think like the rest of us.”
All of it is relevant, though, to the system that Frade created.
“Whenever I
read something, I am always thinking how it applies to football,” he said.
“That is true whether it is something on biology or epigenetics. It is always
football.” Periodization, he said, draws on everything, because it is an
attempt to account for everything.
“Football is
not a linear process,” Frade said. “It is not a sum of things: If you do this,
plus that, you will achieve this.” Instead, “the coach must consider every
aspect, of the individual, of the team. Football is not two-dimensional. It is
multidimensional.”
It is an
imperfect parallel, but the game, as Frade envisages it, is not unlike a
Rubik’s Cube: Every thing a manager does, every single turn, has a consequence
elsewhere. It does not work if the they try to fix one side alone; the problem
must be considered in its entirety.
That is why Frade’s methodology — as employed by Mourinho and the rest —
decrees that there should not be specific physical, tactical or technical
training sessions, no separate fitness coaches or artificial skills exercises,
such as the rondo, the one-touch passing game that forms the basis of Pep Guardiola’s approach. Because every
aspect of the game is interconnected, Frade argues, they must be treated as
such.
That is not
periodization’s only calling card. Everything is related to possible in-game
scenarios: no running to build up general stamina; only running to build up the
exact sort of stamina that might be required at given moments. No practicing
passing; only practicing what pass is needed and when.
Training is
never gentle, with all sessions carried out as fast and as hard as the number
of players on the field allows. And it is not scripted. Players are not told
what to do; they are given a problem and encouraged to solve it for themselves.
“What matters is the process,” Frade said. “They have to work out the answers.”
The week’s training is governed by what Frade and his disciples call the
morfocycle. Throughout the season, each day is devoted to a specific aspect of
play: Tuesday, for example, might always be what to do when in possession,
Wednesday when out of it, Thursday to the opposition’s strengths, and so on.
The exercises
can vary from week to week, from opponent to opponent, but must always be
designed to reinforce the coach’s guiding principles: A team’s identity must
not be compromised to stifle a given opponent. “A chameleon changes color,”
Frade said, “but never forgets it is a chameleon.”
That is not
to say that periodization wants to produce teams of automatons. Because
Mourinho is the highest-profile adherent of Frade’s system, tactical
periodization has a reputation as being defensive, stifling.
Frade rejects
that critique. He is not an adherent of one style or another. The teams he
currently admires — Chelsea, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Napoli — are the ones
that know their own minds best, the ones that have an idea and set out to
accomplish it.
“There is no
attacking football or defensive football,” he said. “When you have the ball,
you have to think about what will happen when you lose it. When you do not have
it, you need to know what you will do when you get it back.”
The game only
exists, in his mind, as a whole. How his system is applied depends entirely on
the interpretation of its messengers. Whether that is the caution of Mourinho
or the verve of Villas-Boas or Rodgers, the creator, their mentor, does not
mind. He does not want to see his invention restricted to one thing or the
other.
It is, it can
be, everything.
Source: The NY Times by Rory Smith
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Friday, May 20, 2022
Charla entre Xavi Hernandez y Joan Vila.(español y subtitulos en inglés).
Talk between Xavi Hernandez (F.C. Barcelona Head Coach) and Joan Vila (Director of Methodology in F.C. Barcelona).
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
"El drama formativo de los futbolistas".
Solo el 0,2% de los jugadores federados alcanzan la
élite, pero para muchos es difícil compaginar los estudios.
Existen centros con ofertas formativas flexibles
enfocadas en ellos.
El 99,8% de los
futbolistas federados (en España en 2020 había 1.074.567) no llegan a
profesionales. Andrés Iniesta, Julen Guerrero y Giorgio Chiellini son algunos
de los que han conseguido pertenecer a ese 0,2% de privilegiados. También son
de los pocos futbolistas de élite que han compaginado su carrera deportiva con
una universitaria. INEF, Periodismo y Administración y Dirección de Empresas,
respectivamente. El central italiano, además, se ha doctorado con sobresaliente
cum laude por su tesis sobre la Juventus.
Pero son excepciones.
Consciente del bajísimo porcentaje de jóvenes que consiguen hacerse un hueco
como estrellas del fútbol, la agencia internacional de representación de
futbolistas Promoesport ha dedicado una campaña, protagonizada por el entrenador
del Espanyol, Vicente Moreno, centrada en fomentar la educación de los
aspirantes a jugadores y la búsqueda de su vocación. El socio-director en
Promoesport y embajador de la campaña, Javier Cordón, considera que es un tema
de responsabilidad social corporativa. “Si el abandono escolar ya es alto de
por sí, entre los futbolistas es todavía más agudo y como, en parte, somos
culpables de ello, vamos a intentar hacer ver a las familias y a los jugadores
la importancia de los estudios, de tener una alternativa”, comenta.
Aun así, Cordón insiste
en que fomentar la educación de estas jóvenes promesas parte desde casa.
“Aquellos que han estudiado aportan al fútbol otras cualidades que los que no
lo han hecho no pueden. Están aterrizados y valoran más lo que tienen. Los que
salen de la burbuja del fútbol y tienen otros hábitos como leer, ir a la
universidad o estar en la cafetería con gente de su edad, cuando se retiren no
van a tener rival”, reconoce.
En muchos casos, la
dificultad reside en compaginar los estudios con el boom económico y social que
viven estos jóvenes. Por eso, algunos centros se dedican a facilitar esa tarea,
como la European Sports Business School, un centro enfocado en cubrir las
necesidades de la industria del deporte que cuenta con un 12% de alumnos
profesionales. “Uno de los retos es la necesidad de generar sistemas educativos
flexibles. En España, la educación es aún muy rígida y muy pocos centros se
adaptan a las necesidades de un deportista profesional”, advierte el director
de la escuela, Jorge Coll.
Su programa de
referencia es el Máster Internacional en Gestión Deportiva que realizan junto
al Valencia CF y Coll destaca también el de Trasformación Digital de Entidades
Deportivas, diseñado y realizado junto al Global Sport Innovation Center, el
centro de innovación para el deporte desarrollado por Microsoft. “El grupo
cuenta con más de 1.000 organizaciones deportivas que buscan profesionales en
esta área”, confiesa.
LaLiga, por su parte,
acaba de crear, dentro de su departamento educativo LaLiga Business School, un
programa piloto dirigido exclusivamente a jugadores de sus clubes. El Global
Players Program, que ya lleva un mes en marcha con profesionales de primera y
segunda división, cuenta con 30 plazas para que durante tres meses los
jugadores reciban las herramientas necesarias para desarrollarse
profesionalmente, en la industria del fútbol o en otras, tanto durante como al
finalizar su carrera deportiva. “Combinamos el formato online con webinars en
streaming y tres días de clases presenciales en Madrid”, explica el director de
LaLiga Business School, José Moya.
La idea es que los
jugadores entiendan mejor la industria en la que trabajan para inspirarlos en
cuanto a qué pueden aportar cuando cuelguen las botas, según sostiene el asesor
externo del centro y director de varios programas, Edouard Legendre. “Durante
muchísimo tiempo nos ha preocupado tener los mejores jugadores. Hoy queremos
tener los mejores gestores. Es una gran oportunidad a nivel de captación de
talento”, añade.
Para el gerente de
marketing del Johan Cruyff Institute, de hecho, los jugadores parten con la
ventaja de conocer el entorno desde dentro. “Cuando se les da información sobre
cómo se gestiona el mundo del deporte desde todas sus diferentes áreas son capaces
de aplicar esos recursos a muchas situaciones ya vividas, valorar su propia
experiencia y aportar soluciones”, insiste. Los programas más demandados en su
centro son el de Gestión Deportiva y el de Administración y Dirección del
Fútbol, ambos en modalidad online para garantizar una total flexibilidad.
Tres de cada cinco
ex-jugadores de la Premier League con un sueldo semanal de 35.000 euros se
arruinan en cinco años, según un estudio de la fundación XPro. Cuantas más
alternativas tengan, por tanto, mejor..
Fuente: https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2022/02/22/fortunas/1645548955_128732.html?rel=buscador_noticias
Monday, May 16, 2022
Sunday, May 1, 2022
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
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