Details about Queiroz's Coaching Philosophy with Iran and in His Career

[Hosseini]

I was reading this book "The Real Giants of Coaching" which had a section on Omid Namazi and his time with Iran, along with his general coaching experiences in the US. The book contains very detailed quotes outlining what Namazi learned from Queiroz based on his time at Real Madrid and under Ferguson at Manchester United. There is also another book titled "Game Changers" I've been reading that discusses Queiroz's role in youth academy development, sport science, leadership and psychology.. It goes into CQ's time with the Portugal youth academies, how he helped develop Portugal's golden generation of players, and introduced new coaching methods and technologies that revolutionized the game.

Excerpt below (there are long but very interesting and worth the read) - (pages 84-87, book by Josh Faga, The Real Giants of Coaching - 2018) - comes from Omid Namazi's experiences and narratives


Omid Namazi worked alongside Carlos Queiroz for four years, taking a lot from the experience.
“The opportunity to work for Carlos for four years was something that I will never forget.
I knew that working for him would give me the experience necessary for me to make the
next step in my coaching career.” That isn’t to say that the opportunity was easy. When
you are face to face with the limits of your potential, things can become uncomfortable,
but that is where we grow the most as people and as coaches. “It was a very, very
challenging environment to work in, but I got so much out of it, and in the end, it made
me a much better person and a better coach.”

Omid has no hesitation in referring to Carlos as his mentor. He isn’t sure he would be
the coach he is today without having worked for Carlos. “The biggest thing I learned
from Carlos was attention to detail. I have never seen a guy so detailed in my life.
Carlos set the expectations for our coaching staff from day one that we were going to do
‘everything for the player so that when they step on the field, they have nothing else to
worry about but to perform.’ Carlos is still in Iran and the players love that about him.”
Coaches often struggle with knowing how to get their players to play for them. Omid
learned from Carlos that if you do everything in your power to help prepare the players
for the game, they will return the favor by performing their best. “The guys played hard
for him. They loved him because they knew that he would give them everything necessary
to perform their best. In return, they would give him everything they had.”

Professional soccer is a hard business; agents, prima donna players, dictatorial owners,
and fair weather fans all add stress to the job of coaching at the highest level. Carlos
knew Omid’s goal was to coach at the highest level possible and his advice was simple.
“In the game of soccer, everyone is a son of a gun until they prove you differently. He
always told me that you have to be guarded. You have to be careful about who you trust
and associate with at the highest level.”
Carlos also taught Omid that opportunity, especially in the game of soccer, is not always
merit based. “I always thought that as long as you were focused on the craft and proved
that you can be a successful coach that you would get to the top. Unfortunately, I have
come to realize that that isn’t always the case. Your network of people that you know is
very, very important. Therefore, as a coach, you have to have the ability to network and
build relationships with people.”

It is perfect that Omid mentioned Carlos’ advice about the so-called son of a guns right
before he mentioned the importance of your network. I had the opportunity to hear Dick
Advocaat, the former Dutch National Team coach, speak, and he provided a piece of
wisdom that mirrored Carlos’ advice to Omid. “Coaching is a lonely profession. You have
to put people around you that you can trust.” Dick’s advice, Carlos’ advice, and Omid’s
comment led me to a profound realization about job opportunities in the game of soccer.
What leads a team or organization to choose one coach over another when they might
be equally qualified? Why are coaching jobs more about who you know rather than what
you know? You see, coaching really is a lonely profession, especially at the highest level.
Carlos isn’t being cynical when he talks about the son of a guns in the soccer world. Fans
can love you one day and be tweeting about sacking you the next. Staff members can be
working behind the scenes to turn the players against you. General managers and owners
can be watching your training session while on the phone interviewing your potential
replacements. It is extremely hard to trust people in the soccer world because it is a
dog eat-dog world at the top, so managers want to hire people that they have built rapport
and trust with. A head coach prioritizes hiring someone he can trust over someone that
is a really good coach because when the going gets tough, they have to feel supported.
That is why you see coaches like Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, and other top managers
bringing their staffs with them from place to place. Trust trumps being the best candidate
for the job. Unfortunately, this means that it isn’t all about how good of a tactician or
trainer you are. Anyone that has ever coached knows that you spend more time with your
staff members than your family. Last season, I remember talking about how we should
play against our upcoming opponent with my fellow assistant coaches until almost 2AM.
Could you imagine having that conversation with a stranger or someone you didn’t trust?
Omid, the idealist, believes that coaching jobs should be based on merit and ability. “It
bothers me to a point because I think the way people should be selected for jobs is their
track record.” But Omid, the practitioner, has learned that networking isn’t always a bad
thing. Networking is your chance to build a relationship with someone that may want
you on their staff one day. Networking isn’t selling out, it is part of coaching, because in
the world of soccer, where you are surrounded by fair-weather people, the last place head
coaches want to feel insecure is inside their own staff.

Omid would have never worked for Carlos if they weren’t connected by that 1996 New
York Metrostars season. “I have learned that networking is important if you want to
reach the highest level you can. I used to avoid networking because I wanted to put my
head down and focus on the work, but I realized that without having a good network of
friends and colleagues, it can leave you looking at the top with no ladder to get there. I
have been much more open in creating relationships with other coaches because when it
comes to getting a job at the highest level it has less to do with your ability and more to
do with the relationship you have with the person hiring.”

I used to have a very toxic relationship with the idea of networking because I too believe
that the hiring process should be based on merit. However, I am able to tolerate the idea
of networking because, instead of looking at networking as sucking up to people that
may be able to help you in the future, I use it to help me in the only thing I really care
about: improvement. My goal is to maximize my potential as a coach and talking with
other coaches outside your network is a useful way to improve, get new ideas, and ask for
advice. In fact, you are networking, at least by my definition, just by reading this book.
You are learning from coaches outside your network and gaining insights into how they
think, make decisions, and view the game. So if you find yourself with an upset stomach
thinking about shameless networking, just redefine the relationship and look at it as a
way to share ideas and learn something from a fellow coach you would otherwise never
learn from.

Coaching Professional Players


Omid has coached players at the highest levels in the world. He mentioned that there is
a big difference in coaching his players at the U18 National Team level and the players
with the Iran National Team. “At the highest level you are dealing with big personalities
and egos and a lot of the players think they know it all. And to be honest, at the highest
level, players pretty much know what they need to know so it becomes much more about
managing people and their personalities. On the pitch, yes, of course, you need to be
tactically sound, but if the players don’t want to play for you or don’t believe in the tactics,
then it doesn’t matter how good they are. More than anything, man management and
knowing how to manage personalities is the biggest part.” Fortunately, Omid’s mentor,
Carlos Queiroz, had experience working for the greatest man manager of all time, Alex
Ferguson. “I have talked to Carlos a lot about this because he was side by side with Sir
Alex for six years. Carlos will tell you, Alex Ferguson was not a great tactical coach, but
he was the best man manager in the world.”

Omid admits that he is a stronger teacher than he is a manager. “My man management
is improving, but I am definitely better on the tactical side, which is why I am really
focusing on improving my ability to manage relationships because I believe you need to
be great at both to be a top coach.” Omid believes that the changing personalities of our
youth require a necessary evolution in the personality of coaches. “Generations change
as we go along, and when I played, the coaches were very old school and it was sort of
like a dictatorship. Then, when I played pro, I started to see a shift where some coaches
were dictators, but there were newer coaches that communicated more with the players
and asked them for their feedback. I believe the trend now is to have a lot of feedback
from the players, asking them for their thoughts on the playing style or formation, for
example.”

[Hosseini]

Sports Science and Modern Football (Excerpt From: João Medeiros. “Game Changers: How a Team of Underdogs and Scientists Discovered What it Takes to Win.” - 2018 - iBooks.)


“The concept of the game model was also ingrained in the footballing approach in Portugal. It was a methodology that Carlos Queiroz had pioneered after taking charge of the national youth team. For years, Queiroz traveled to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, visiting youth academies and national training centres for ideas that could inform what would be Portugal’s game model, one that would be specific to the talent he had at his disposal. He conceptualised a game model as a hierarchical structure of general principles of play objectives, which applied to any situation in the game, and sub-principles, which were rules of action pertaining to specific moments. He identified five different moments in the game: attack, defence, transition attack–defence, transition defence–attack, and set pieces. These moments were not siloed. They were fluid, interdependent and constantly interchanging. ‘With the ball you attack and you defend. Without it, you attack and defend as well,’ Queiroz said.

To Queiroz, the game model should be ever-evolving and reflect the coach’s philosophy, the culture of the club, the characteristics of the players. It formed the identity of the club, the guiding principle; the players coordinated their actions as a collective. “There are many ways to win a game. The game model reflected how you believe you should win. And, as such, it reflected how the team should train. ”

The Faculty of Human Kinetics at the Technical University of Lisbon was founded in 1975. The institution has been innovative since its foundation, awarding not only physical education degrees but also coaching certificates.

One of its first students was Carlos Queiroz. He was an eager student of sport, devouring the literature and conducting his own experiments. He not only filmed training sessions at professional football clubs, but also kids playing with ragged balls in the street. He was soon publishing articles explaining his conceptualisation of the game, which he increasingly saw as complex and dynamic. As such, it required a new approach to training, in which all exercises had to integrate all the aspects of competition, from the emotional to the cognitive. The game should be taught by playing it, Queiroz argued. He eschewed repetitive drills in favour of small-sided games that retained the complex essence of the sport. He called that principle ‘simplification of the complex structure of the game’. ‘We can’t use information to guide our behaviour that won’t be available during competition,’ Araújo explains. ‘The best information to calibrate my action is the information I have available to me during competition. It’s the position of the ball, the displacement of my teammate. Those guys couldn’t conceive of a different way of coaching. All training was done on the basis of competition. Anything that detracted from that was considered a step backwards.

In 1985, Queiroz was invited by the Portuguese Football Federation to take the helm of the national youth team, where he was able to put his theories into practice. ‘If I had any doubts when I started training the youth team on the basis of my methods, I lost them all,’ Queiroz said in 2017 to the Portuguese weekly Expresso. ‘The progression of the players was exponential and the results spectacular in a short period of time.’ Under Queiroz, Portugal would go on to win two World Youth Championships back to back, in 1989 and in 1991. That group of talented players, who became known as the Golden Generation, would later form the basis for a senior team who, led by players like Luis Figo and Rui Costa, reached the semi-finals of the 2000 European Championships, were runners-up in 2004, and World Cup semi-finalists in 2006. Queiroz himself would later coach at some of the best clubs in the world, from Manchester United, as Alex Ferguson’s assistsnt, to Real Madrid, and take three different countries – South Africa, Iran and Portugal – to the World Cup on four occasions.
The impact of Queiroz’s methodology extended beyond the talent on the pitch.

As a lecturer, he taught a generation of coaches who, in recent years, have been champions in Russia, France, Greece and England. Even after his departure, the Faculty of Human Kinetics remained faithful to its philosophy. Training centres were established, ensuring that sports science students, while pursuing research projects, also learned on the job by coaching actual teams rather than just analysing video footage.

‘They are like scientists,’ Davids recalls. ‘They have this experiential knowledge from just trying this out in the field day in, day out, experimenting. They didn’t use the language of ecological dynamics. They weren’t aware of the theoretical ideas of Gibson. They were just intuitively applying them.’

Like Queiroz, Davids bemoans the traditional approach to training that he frequently witnesses at professional clubs and youth academies, often based around isolated, repetitive drills. One of the problems of such methods is what Davids calls task decomposition. For instance, when teaching kids how to dribble, coaches frequently teach them to first control the ball, often dribbling around and through static cones on the pitch; they only later try to dribble the ball past other players. ‘The information present in both environments are very different and the actions that emerge are consequently different,’ Davids says..."

[oracle]

this is a very sophisticated thread.
it shows how much we need carlos.