Bruno Oliveira Assistant Football Coach in Al-Arabe SC, Al-Duhail Sports Club, Leicester City FC, Swansea City AFC, Queens Park Rangers FC, FC Porto, Lekhwiya, Beijing, Renhe FC
Co-author of “Mourinho – why so many wins?” He as a Degree in Physical Education and Sports by University of Porto – Sports Faculty (focus Football).
TP: Could you explain to us what is mainly your role with the coaches you worked with so far?
Yeah, I think the other day I was doing the maths and I think it’s eight or nineth coach now. So obviously each one of them has its own specificities and its own differences. With Paulo Sousa, when I worked six years with him, when we started together, and both of us really started together. I was coming with the academic side, with the university expertise and with the contact of Professor Vítor Frade in the University of Porto. And Paulo Sousa coming from being a top professional player, and playing in big teams and in big leagues like Dortmund and Juventus.
So it was a kind of a perfect match in the beginning and I was responsible for everything regarding the organisation of the training, the methodological part. I was fully responsible for it. Paulo was the guy, like it should be, the guy that created, his own game idea, our own idea of how to play and he was very good at that and very creative and very experienced in that.
And me, I brought more the organisation of the daily basis, the sessions and how to achieve the biggest goal, which was to make the team play in a certain way, in our way, and it was fantastic. Because I was coming more from the theory and to put it in practice and to be lucky to make the practice so pure, without any interferences, it was amazing and I think it worked very well for a long time.
Then in China it was different. I was like the head coach and then I had, I was working to a Chinese head coach but he was like an assistant. He was just like the face, you know, because he was a media guy, he was an ex-player, a former player for Chinese national team and then he was like a pundit. He was for many years a pundit in the television, like a sports commentator and a football commentator, but he never really had the experience of being a head coach.
So I was hired to, let’s say, make all the job behind him and he was the face. He was the face for the media, he was the face for the camera, but I was controlling the all process, which was a massive experience for me because it was like if I already experienced two years of being a head coach because I was taking all the decisions, the subs, the starting eleven, everything. Obviously he had his opinions and he had his input, but I was kind of the main ruler of the process.
Then I came to Qatar with Belmahdi, to Duhail, at the time it was called La Jolla, and again different country, different setting. Belmahdi was a very strong and tough guy, very tough leader, leading almost by fear, by respect. I don’t like to use the word fear, but more by respect.
He demanded, the lines were very clear and he had very strong man management and man leadership and I was taking care of it. I came into his staff as his number two and I organised all the process, methodological process and all the training process from A to Z, trying to make the team play according to his idea. He was very open, very close at the start, the first two, three months, but then very, very open and gave me a lot of room to work.
Then I worked with Rui Faria for the end, it was the first time that I didn’t control the methodological part, the process, because Rui this was his main area of expertise, so it was for me a surprise and a very big experience because it was the first time that I learned with someone about how to organise the process. Really, it was a massive experience for me because Rui, as you know, follows the same ideal as me, regarding the process, of course, not as a way of playing, but regarding the Tactical Periodisation®, he’s the one that most probably used the Tactical Periodisation on the practice for the first time fully with Mourinho and with a huge success, so he’s part of the history of this methodology as one of the main characters, for sure, on the practical side, on the pitch, it was really an inspiration for me and to work with him was amazing because for the first time I learned things regarding the training organisation and the training process. Because basically for many, many years I have to do it on my own.
Yes, I spent 10 years doing it, discovering it by my own and doing it by myself without almost no challenge in that part, doing the way I believed to and now suddenly one guy arrives and I have someone that I can play tennis with, you know, I can hit some balls and some ideas, exchange some balls and ideas and it was amazing because with his previous experiences was something that give him insigths about many things I was reflecting and thinking about and I never had someone to debate those things.
So it was amazing to hear his stories, his experiences, at the high, high level and some of my doubts and my questions were very good to confront with him because he’s a top expert, he’s a top coach and for sure as a coach, the pure side of coaching, he’s the best guy that I worked with by miles, you know, he’s very, very good.
It’s the first time as a head coach, it’s normal that he wanted to have full control of the process, like when he was as an assistant coach. So of course when he was head coach, he came like with that ace, with that wild card and was very good.
Then after him, when I moved with the coach that I’m working now, he’s a local coach, a Qatari coach, I’m again back to, it’s a bit different now because I’m in a different stage of my career, I have now a lot of experience, I have a lot of sessions and training sessions and games and everything, so and Younes was just, just starting as a coach, just finished his career three /four years ago, when we started he finished one year before, so he was very open-minded and very keen to learn and and very open to my input, so I was kind of more like a mentor. I did more like a mentorship, trying to bring, to make emerge on him his tactical knowledge and his game ideas that I felt straight away that were very good, but he needed that organisation and how to achieve them. To find the shortcuts to achieve them, and this is where we made a good match because I helped him on this, he’s the leader of the process now and he’s a very, much better coach than he was when I met him three years ago, he’s a much more complete coach and he’s battling and fighting against coaches from all the world, Portuguese, Spanish, he’s in the middle of them and in the high level like a professional foreign coach, which makes me very happy.
He was so open in the beginning and so straight with me, he’s a very good person with values that you don’t see frequently in football and I am very happy for him to make this jump on his career because he’s the first local coach, he’s the first Qatari coach to achieve massive success, to guide the team of the top three, to win an Emir Cup, he has a lot of prestige now and very fast because he’s very young, he’s only 42.
TP: in which context you felt that you have to be more careful?
Definitely in England because when I was in England, I could see, we were at the very beginning of this madness of the data and the GPS and the control of everything. We were just in the beginning compared to what it is now but I felt that this was something that was going to be huge already in 2009, 2010. I started to see all these guys, sports science, sports science department, they started with two, three guys then suddenly they become 10, then they become 15, then they have 10 guys from university on a free work experience, they become 20 guys.
I said this is going to be something difficult to control in the future and I think nowadays, from what I speak with my colleagues and my friends that I have there in England, I think nowadays is really, really a big problem for a coach. I don’t want to say to you the name of the coach but last summer, last pre-season, we were in a camp and one of my English friends and this old English coach and one of the guys with more games in Premier League and Championship, more games in the Football League, he told me, Bruno, we are here for 10 days and we train three times per day. I have 20 minutes each day to me to train, all the rest I don’t control.
Sports science, physical department, I don’t know what. He said and I tried to ask for more and if I ask for more, the guy, imagine I’m training for 20 minutes, I go to 30min, the guy comes, coach, the GPS is saying that we already passed all the limits and you have to stop and the Coach said to me, “what’s this man? I cannot do my sessions? I cannot make my training, everything is undermined, everything is science now, everything is data, what about the football?” He was telling me and he doesn’t know about my background and I was speaking to him “you have to have people with you that know what they are doing and that they are sure about what they are doing. If you don’t put these people in their place, you’re in trouble, they will eat you alive.” After three months he got sacked.
So, this could tell you that the problem… And the sports science is still in the club after one year or two years, but this guy also, because he came from Manchester United, the sports scientist in that club that I am talking about, the sports scientist, he came with the crew, he didn’t come alone. First, he comes from Man United, so he comes with a lot of power and prestige, the guy, he was 10 years in Man United, he has a massive power inside the club, you know, and then he brings his crew with him, his eight or nine scientists around him. So imagine the trap that you are in, you know, when you find this and you find it in Qatar.
TP: You’re telling me that at that time, you already have to struggle in some way?
At the time 2008, 2009 until 2012, it was just the beginning. You had these guys, but at the time you had the other problems, you had the physios that were controlling the fitness, because England is a very special place, you know, when I arrived to England, the fitness coach was a physiotherapist, and then I went to move to another club, and the head of fitness was a physiotherapist, and he had two fitness coaches to be his assistants, so, and there was no doctor in the club, there was no club doctors, the physio had the power in the medical department, and still nowadays, you see this, you see it in England, in many clubs they don’t have doctors, they have the head physio, and when you have a specific problem or injury, they will send you to specialists.
For example in Portugal we have a very good thing, that is doctors specialized in sports, or even now we have doctors that are specialists in football injuries. This is something that in England you don’t see too much, I don’t know, maybe it’s an academical situation, but you don’t see it.
But, about the sports science and the GPS, you could see the potential of the “little worm” you could see that the little worm could become “a dinosaur” soon, and because when the guys arrive to the people with numbers, and they have a lot of numbers, and they have files and files with numbers and with data, to convince and to influence the owners, or the sporting director, or the owner, or the head coach, or the assistant coach, when you go with numbers and with figures, it’s very easy, and the other person doesn’t understand. Many of them have more like economical background than football background, so they are used to deal with numbers, it’s the kind of language they are comfortable in. Exactly, so it’s easy for them to thrive, to proliferate, and I could see straight away this, I could feel that this was, and now Rui, when he came to Doha three years ago, he told me, Bruno, now it’s incredible, every club, in most of the clubs, you have this problem, this disease, this sickness of the numbers and controlling, and then you do one thing, and we are always in the weak position, the head coach and the staff and the assistant coaches, you are always in the weak position, because you depend on results.
If you win, there’s no problem, but nobody wins 40 games a season, you always will have a bad spell, a bad patch of results, so, and this is when they attack you, you know, if you don’t know how to manage this, because I think if you’re smart, when you arrive to the clubs, you should deal with this.
TP: So the big question, ho to deal with it?
Dont miss Bruno Oliveira question on the next article.
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KEYWORDS: TACTICAL PERIODIZATION; TRAINING; FOOTBALL; SOCCER; SPORTS SCIENCE; GPS.
