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: It’s very surprising in how all this non-specific work is still engraved in players beliefs…

Bruno Oliveira: This is a massive opportunity for us to take advantage. You just need to win those first times or in those first moments to convince the people to believe in what you do and to decompose the pre-introductive inserted ideas that they have in their brain. I can tell you, I have one player now, he’s 36 year old, played for 20 years and I cannot change him.

I cannot take this physical obsession that he has. He wants his muscle to be here like this and here like that. You cannot remove that from his brain and he achieved massive success.

What you need to do is try to reduce it a little bit in a way that he doesn’t get injured and that he will feel better and lighter and sharper. You cannot stop him completely but you need to try to slowly reduce and to try to slowly convince him that he’s doing more harm to himself than the opposite. It’s the same with the proteins and all these powders that they eat in the dressing room that they have access in any dressing room you arrive of a professional team.

You have free, free, it’s there on the table. You have protein Z, creatine Y, I don’t know what. You have everything and the kids arrive there and they put it on the shakers and they drink and nobody says nothing.

This is something amazing for me. And then we talk about nutrition and eat well and sleep well. And it’s the same.

Some guys are addicted to this and what you have to do is try to bring them to your side slowly without making a direct confrontation but making them understand that they will be able to extend their career more and that they will feel lighter and fresher and more sharp to play football, which we know that it’s what happens when you use our methodology. I feel that my team in Qatar is the team that outperforms the rest of the teams in terms of the physical side and which physical work we do? And this is what they don’t think.

So most of the teams, because of the high temperatures and the heat and the humidity, after 60 minutes, they are dead in the game or after 70 minutes, they die. They have a big knockdown.

They start very strong. After 60 minutes or 70, boom, down. My team, no, 90 minutes. Why? This is what they should think.

And this is how I convince my players. “Guys, why we always arrive fresh until the last minute? And why we won 30% of our games in the last five minutes? You think it’s coincidence?”

TP: In Qatar, how crucial is to have sensitivity in this kind of climate?

Bruno Oliveira: The weather condition has a massive influence and interference on everything. Explain to me how it’s possible, taht Coaches, and when I say coaches, I say coaching staffs that was working in Europe in the high-level teams in Greece or in France… They arrive to Doha and their training sessions is two hours and a half, three hours!

In that climate, in that weather, that you know that just the fact that you are outside without running- Already stressed. Exposed to the heat. It’s very stressful already.

Stressful and demanding. You lose water, you feel tired. If you spend 20 minutes outside, me as I am not running in the sessions, I am walking around, and I get tired.

This is what I was telling you in the beginning. I think we still can make a huge methodological impact around because you see a lot of atrocities and a lot of nonsense.

TP: This side of the business that exists around football, which requires a certain type of body, in aesthetic terms, has an impact on players, how do you deal with that?

Bruno Oliveira: To be honest, I have no patience for that. When I see that I show the player, with patience, with time, and still I don’t see any change. I have very little tolerance for that because then I believe that it’s stupid. If it’s something aesthetical for the upper body or something, I think it’s easy to manage as long as it doesn’t become something that starts to interfere with the body mass and they start to become big. I think it’s quite easy to control.

For me, the secret is to have your staff educated. You have to educate your staff in a certain way. They need to know the limits. They need to know the boundaries. It’s not to take their creativity and their quality, no.

Because I believe that they should have their space for their creations and their own input. But you need to give them boundaries and you need to give them a guidance line and what is the philosophy. And to educate them in that way.

Because there are many moments that you cannot control everything, you cannot be in two or three places at the same time. And this is the time where you need them to be there and to have a word with the players and to help them to be on track and not to run away of the track. And I think it’s something that I learned with…

And, if I can give any advice, I think this is one that I always give. It’s to educate your staff. And educate them doesn’t mean make them think like you. They can have their own thoughts and they can have their own exercises.

They can create their own sessions and they should create their own sessions, but inside your logic. And your logic needs to be very, very clear for everyone. And this is one of the big lessons that I learned and that I see that make a lot of difference.

This makes a lot of difference in the environment because nowadays the staff number increased so much. When I started, we was three or four. Now we are 12 or 15.

In the national team, we was like 15 staff members. And I think it will continue to increase the number of staff members. So it’s very, very important for the head coach to have a guideline, a clear guidance and a clear philosophy.

And not forcing people to change, but to make them understand that there are many ways to work in football and there are many philosophies of work, but they need to be synthesized in your philosophy. And they need to know the limits, the boundaries, what we want and what are the main guidelines of the process.

I think that helps a lot. It takes a lot of work off your shoulders. It makes you win time for the important things. Because when I started, I was very obsessed with controlling all the departments and to be on top of everyone. I was there from 8 am to 8 pm and I was on top of everything. And now I’m much more relaxed because of this, because I believe that we should give the tools for the others to work and to oversee and to manage, manage it without interfering with their own pride and their own self esteem. It’s very important for them to feel important in the process. And as long as they follow our way and our guidance.

TP: Do you think players are starting to question this more conventional way of seeing training or not?

Bruno Oliveira: No, I really don’t believe. I believe that football is cycles. And I believe the cycle of the data is growing. It’s still growing. More and more. Until a point that it will have to “boom”, to explode. But I believe that it’s in full steam growth. And is proliferating, because it’s easy to convince. It’s trendy. It’s much easier today than it was 20 years ago.

To convince a player and to convince the people that this is the way. The players are in the break before season starts, and all of them have their personal trainers. And they just do runnings and stupid things. And some of them play football with their friends, like in the eighties, like Romario and Ronaldinho used to do. But most of them, it’s the period that they should be on holiday. They are training, they are training individual fitness.

TP: How was to be in a World Cup?

Bruno Oliveira: Amazing experience. It’s something that, everyone that is a coach should want to achieve one day. And I was lucky enough to be invited by Professor Queiroz.

I had previous invitations from him before, before the World Cup, but the timings were never possible to match. And this time, because I was in Qatar and the World Cup was there, it was possible to make the match and to have this incredible experience. Something that I will remember forever.

Also took the opportunity to measure myself, the high level, if you are in the level, if you’re not in the level, in what position you are in that level, because you are working with probably the best or one of the best coaches ever in our country. And one of the biggest references and one of the biggest reformer of Portuguese football. So it was a very intense experience.

You get a lot of knowledge from him. You learn a lot from him because you are working with a guy that is for 40 years in the high level and knows all the shortcuts and knows all that. It was ridiculous.

TP: This was the World Cup with less preparation time, ever. How you deal with this?

Bruno Oliveira: Some of the teams had advantage because they had time to work, but it’s impossible. And it’s not good for the football in general. It’s not good that you have a 12 or 13 days preparation for the World Cup.

It’s not normal. It’s something that FIFA should rethink and that should fix because it’s very hard for a national team coach to prepare a team with 12 days preparation. And it’s not 12 clean days, because one thing is 12 days after they come from a short holiday of five or seven days.

Taremi came from Porto’s game. After two days, he was training in Iran with a team, it’s a lot of things. Imagine the teams that came from America and from South America.

Some of them had the advantage of having the ability to bring the players earlier because of the local competition that finished early. Like Qatar, they had six months preparation, the national team of Qatar all together five or six months. So it was not a big advantage in the end because the results were poor.

But with the 12 days, 13 days, like most of the teams have, the top teams that have the top players, they have 12, 13 days of preparation. The top players that were playing in Champions League in Europe one week and after they trained with the national team for 12 days. It’s not good for football because most of the top players, the top stars in the world, they arrived to the World Cup tired.

And this is something we felt straight away. And how you can play three games in 10 days with all this previous contexto? It was very hard, especially for the teams that only have… if you are Argentina or if you are Brazil, that you have 25 players all in the same level or in similar level, it’s one thing, like Portugal or Spain, you have 25 or 30 players all in the same level. But some of the teams, they have 12 great players in the high level and then you have five in a lower level and the other five or 10 in a different level. And this is what makes the difference in this type of competition. Because it’s three games with three days in between, you have to rcover the team. In the second game, you have to rotate the team in some moment or in the third game, you have to rrotate the team with four or five fresh players and many of the teams, they don’t have this.

This is why it’s not fair for the smaller teams. They are already in disadvantage because they don’t have a big amount of big name and big star players. And then you arrive to the competition and the rule of the competition even punishes you more because it makes the interval between games so short that don’t give you time to recover properly. Because these teams if they have four or five days in between the games, the story would be different.

Argentina plays the first game against Saudi. The second game, you change five players, the level is the same. The third game, you change another five players and the level is the same, you know. The difference is very small. France, Germany, and Portugal the same. But the other teams that are in a lower tier, they don’t have this 20 or 25 players in the same level. They cannot make rotation after two, three days and keep the standard or the level.

This is something that FIFA should rethink. I know that they only think about the business side, but they need to take care of football and taking care of football is discussing and thinking about these things.

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KEYWORDS: TACTICAL PERIODIZATION; TRAINING; FOOTBALL; SOCCER; SPORTS SCIENCE; GPS.