Vítor Frade
Creator and Methodological Coordinator of Tactical Periodisation by Vítor Frade®.
Vítor Manuel da Costa Frade born in Vila Franca da Beira on September 24th, 1944.
He created Tactical Periodisation®, a training methodology that emerged approximately 40 years ago.
Tactical Periodisation is known, internationally, through the successes achieved by several Portuguese coaches: José Mourinho, André Villas-Boas, Vítor Pereira, Luís Castro, Carlos Carvalhal and many more.
Author of the book “Vítor Frade off side all the time”, a «masterpiece» that allows us to understand why he is acknowledged as one of the greatest specialists and thinkers of football, training and the game.
“We don’t want players who read the game, so it will mean we are reacting to what someone wrote. We want players who write the game in a collective basis.”
Tactical Periodisation® is an autonomously constituted knowledge, built by Vítor Frade from his personal experiences and lifelong knowledge that started in childhood and is still present in his daily life. In fact, he stated that all the moments of his life were important: as a child playing in the streets of the Porto city, where he grew up; as a professional player of football and volleyball; as a student of different university courses (Engineering, Physical Education, Philosophy and Medicine); as a professor of different subjects (training theory and methodology and football specialization) at the Faculty of Sports of the University of Porto were he teached for thirty-five years; as a professional coach and as assistant coach in many Portuguese football league teams: 6 seasons in Boavista FC, 6 seasons in F. C. Felgueiras and more than 20 years in FC Porto.
He stayed a long period of his professional carreer in FC Porto, especially in the first team from 1993 to 1997, in 1999 and 2000, where he won three Portuguese National Championship, 4 Portuguese Cups and 4 Portuguese Super Cups. He has also been present in the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League (as the assistant coach of Sir Bobby Robson).
Carlos Daniel, one of the most respected Portuguese journalists, wrote about him in an impressive news piece named “Vítor Frade, the great influencer”:
Vítor Pereira is one of the obvious disciples, Carlos Carvalhal too, Jorge Jesus invited him to F. C. Felgueiras team staff, Fernando Santos, confirmed that he changed the training concepts due to him, Mourinho and Villas-Boas know him closely, Luís Castro became a friend for life, Paulo Fonseca was influenced by Jesus but admits that everyone learned indirectly from the old master, and the list would be endless.
The conclusion is always the same: no one like him has influenced so many coaches and so deeply. Vítor Frade is the greatest silent revolutionary in Portuguese football.
Pep Lijnders, assistant coach of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, arrived in Porto from PSV to change the youth football. Changed himself too…
… Lijnders recognizes in Vítor Frade the man who turned ideas into principles and made him realize that it is necessary to train how you want to play. At a very young age, the Dutchman who arrived here as a specialist in individual development, left with the conviction that what is essential is the collective.
As a football thinker, he and his thoughts are in constant evolution, as he constantly contributes with new evolutionary concepts for his methodology. As he says, in an in-depth interview about his thoughts, published in the New York Times, named “Cybernetics, Cesarean Sections and Soccer’s Most Magnificent Mind“:
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.
