Luis Castro, one of our Ambassadors, talks with us about the complementary and fundamental training on the Pattern Morphocycle .

TP: In a training session, taking into account what is the complementary part and the fundamental part of that day, in a Pattern Morphocycle, do you feel that the complementary part of training, particularly on a Wednesday or a Friday, sometimes the players can make it a little easier. Facilitate in the sense of, what is complementary to what is fundamental?

Luís Castro: We first need to define what is complementary and what is fundamental and what training for you, for me, for my colleague, for each of my coaches is. We need to understand this. We need to understand if the complement… Isn’t the complement often much more important for some players than the fundamental?

I’ll give an example. We often, in the fundamental part, in exercises in smaller spaces, there are many players who can hide without you realizing that they are hiding. You need to have a keen eye when training to understand it.

If the space is so short, if the ball is lost, and gained again, and lost again, and gained, and lost, you are there involved in groups of four, five players who win and lose the ball, and you don’t even know if he’s going to turn himself in or not. And then you get to the complementary part, which for me… even yesterday I did complementary, not today.

Yesterday I complemented the defensive line. They worked on the defensive line, line behaviors, go-up, go-down, covering spaces in the back, change side, pressing from the full-back, how the line behaves, the pivot goes in the line, how the pivot enters the line when the full-back must jump and enter where? Whether the full-back comes in or comes in between the two central defenders, depending on the opponent, the winger, aerial finish or progressive finish and such. Is this part of the complementary, where everyone is no longer in training, some have left, not more important than the fundamental?

Which is the part you call fundamental? What do I mean with this? My advice, if I have any authority to give advice, is that training is training. And training can always be taken seriously, and we always can lead it in the same way. And not allow any player to change our understanding of training.

If any player, and this is where the coach’s leadership comes in, if any player thinks that training is about having a few moments of decompression, of not being taken seriously for this or that, it is up to the coach to quickly put the player into what is the team spirit, or show him the path to the reserves, or show him the way to the exit door. Be it the club’s most expensive player, the club’s cheapest player, the fans’ most beloved player, or the player… It’s up to the coach to show that training is training.

To me there is no complementary part. We give it designation, but the player does not have to understand that designation. The player must understand that he is in training. These designations are for us. They are not for them. For them everything is fundamental.

If we go by what the word means, fundamental, it is important, it is very important. Everything is very important. So, for the player, from the moment he starts training, everything is fundamental. For us, it can be complementary, it can be fundamental, the initial part, the part… all of that. Which I don’t even designate. I don’t have that designation.

In fact, anyone who knows me, knows that I don’t have phrases attached to my work, nor a method of this or that. No, it’s my understanding based on what I’ve experienced to date.

I’m not saying that I’m wise, but I think that the coach’s life and the coach’s knowledge grows a lot throughout his career due to the experiences he has had. I think this is the big difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is what comes to us at the level of information, wisdom is what we sediment within ourselves at the expense of our lived experiences and the older we are, the more experiences we have. Therefore, the more wisdom we should have.

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Luis Castro is currently the Al Nassr Head Coach, he has a 25 year career has a Football Coach. Worked in Botafogo, Al-Duhail, Shakhtar Donetsk, Vitória SC, GD Chaves and FC Porto.

Keywords: PATTERN MORPHOCYCLE; FOOTBALL/SOCCER; TACTICAL PERIODIZATION®; TRAINING SESSION; EXERCISE; COACH.

Photo credit: Divulgação/Al-Nassr