In the conversations he had for a year with people who had gone through Roger Schmidt’s career and changing rooms, the journalist Luís Mateus noticed a gradual change in the coach’s attitudes, but also in the football coach’s ideas.
There is a lot of creative instinct, obsession with an idea worked to exhaustion, but also a search for a better balance and a commitment to a more technical and leisurely football. After all, the Roger Schmidt we saw in Portugal is quite different from the versions in Austria, China or the Netherlands.
Wouldn’t it be risky to use the term “revolutionary” to characterize a coach who has just won a championship? Under penalty of this term being quickly emptied in light of the results?
First of all, I must say that this is a journalistic work. It is not a book to glorify anyone, that is, it is not a work to glorify Roger Schmidt as a hero. It is a journalistic work that begins, regardless of whether Benfica is champion or not.
I’m talking about a coach who arrives in Portugal as a stranger. But he’s also someone who is considered a top-tier football manager, even though he flopped, if you want to put it like that, for example, Bayer Leverkusen fans. Still, he is still considered one of the best coaches in Germany. And he is a coach who defeated Pep Guardiola when he was coaching Salzburg, a coach who created a lot of hype around him, but who, even so, arrives in Portugal as a stranger.
This book is above all a journey of discovery where, speaking with various people, with ex-players, coaches, with journalists, with authors of other books, I try to understand the vision that the world of football has about Roger Schmidt. In other words, this is not only our vision in Portugal, but it is also the way the coach is seen in Austria and Germany, in China, in the Netherlands.
This is also an independent work, that is, this book has not, never had any follow-up from Benfica or Roger Schmidt (…) nobody from Benfica knew of the existence of the book.
The part of the revolutionary is a bit like that, that is, Roger Schmidt is a revolutionary in himself, because he is part of the vanguard of German coaches. There are those who consider him, even former players of his, more revolutionary than himself [Jurgen] Klopp and, if you will, more revolutionary, even than Guardiola, for defending a more aggressive, stronger form of pressure. That’s why I consider him a revolutionary.
But he is also a Benfica revolutionary. He is someone who comes and changes the way of doing things, the identity or the connection of the fans with the football of the club. He is someone who brings the team closer to the identity of the club ”.
What discoveries did you make about this coach, speaking from the point of view of the technical part of the game?
There are some very fun things in preparation here, but they are things that come from Red Bull’s philosophy, that is, here there is a very close connection at the beginning with Ralf Rangnick, who is one of the ideologues of the new German football. , or modern football. I’m not saying that soccer shaped Roger Schmidt, but it ended up influencing him in part.
When he arrives at Salzburg, Roger Schmidt has a stage at Paderborn on his resume, that is, he is an unknown coach for Austrian football. Salzburg had already had German coaches like Lothar Matthaus, or someone like Giovanni Trapattoni, but to no avail. For his part, Ralf Rangnick arrives at the club as sports director, who will look for Roger Schmidt to train.
I think they both end up being influenced by each other’s ideas. Roger Schmidt becomes even more radical than Rangnick himself. Some of these ideas were exhibited this year in Portugal. Roger Schmidt has a model of counter pressure [gegenpressing] that favors the recovery of the ball in less than five seconds. If that doesn’t happen (in training) it blows a whistle and everything goes back to the beginning (of the training exercise).
But are we really talking about a whistle, does that whistle exist in training?
Yes, yes, in training even the whistle blows after five seconds without recovering the ball. Some former players talk about the idea of winning the ball back in five seconds and attacking in ten seconds. That is, you have to go directly to attack the opponent’s goal.
But in this book we talk about that identity and about Roger Schmidt, but also about his evolution as a coach. In Austria this more radical version is more present, but in Germany, at Leverkusen, he realizes that against more difficult opponents he cannot be so radical -even keeping the idea of pressure, counter-pressure and defensive line so much- . high.
It adapts, it turns out not to be so radical in moving the players to perform these movements, that is, it begins to change a bit.
The first two seasons are positive for a Leverkusen team nicknamed “Neverkusen”, “the eternal bride”, the team that never wins anything. Schmidt ends up bringing Leverkusen closer to the decisions, even without being champion or being second, he manages to put the team in the Champions League. In the last season (the third), he ends up losing a bit and it will be, perhaps, his worst season.
In China he realizes that he has a more veteran team than the one he had in Austria or Leverkusen. For this reason, the coach understands that the team cannot be so aggressive when it comes to reacting to the loss.
Roger Schmidt is bound to promote slower play, because players using it may not have as much energy available for recovery. That is why moments of pause are necessary, an idea that Schmidt will also transfer to football in the Netherlands and that has its final or definitive stage in Benfica, with players like João Mário, with Grimaldo, like Aursnes, even like Chiquinho.
We are talking about players who join this pause, so as not to be constantly in a back and forth of pressures and counter-pressures, but also allow the team to have more time on the ball and, therefore, better control the defensive moment.
And this is an evolution that we perceive in the book. Something curious is that in the Netherlands they accused him of changing the team a lot. He was constantly changing from game to game, even when players scored one or two goals, he ended up removing them from the team for the next game. He was always in full rotation. In Portugal he ended up adopting an eleven and almost always with the same players.
The version we see on the Portuguese bench today is a version of a calm and irascible manager. In Austria he threw bottles on the ground, yelled at everyone. In Holland and Germany there were big problems with the referees, with very fierce reactions. Here we have not seen any of that, despite some criticism, but here you can also see the evolution of it.
One of the criticisms of Roger Schmidt in the Netherlands had to do with the constant physical problems of the players…
I couldn’t go very deep into this topic because the players weren’t very available either, they didn’t open up much to talk about it. In this most recent stage, the coach has been betting more on a stable team, at Benfica he even seemed to squeeze the players to exhaustion.
I think the way of playing helped to better handle the physical issue. If you are not in a constant hurry, you can better manage the moments of the game and also the physical problem of the players.
In an interview with a German newspaper, Roger Schmidt explained that in recent years he had invested more in controlling the ball, in controlling the moments of the game, which also allows him to better manage the players.
At Benfica, with the players he found and who ended up convincing him -I remember that João Mário was seen as a player who would be fired, Grimaldo was also at stake with the situation last season, or the case of Chiquinho-, players that Schmidt was adding to his model, they also allowed him to add that break in the Benfica game, which also has a reflection in the physical situation.
It is true that we spent the last weeks of the season saying that the Benfica players seemed exhausted, but the truth is that they also started the season early, because of the qualifying rounds to access the European competitions. I think the physical handling turns out to be very good.
In the future, will you try to find more players with this feature, the break?
I think Roger Schmidt first needs a leader. I’m not saying he’s a central defender, he could be a midfielder like Enzo Fernández. So you need a player like Grimaldo.
Roger Schmidt will continue to look for a hybrid model: a model that allows him to be very direct and vertical but, at the same time, be in control of the game. He has gone from radicalization to something more balanced. This is the meaning of Roger Schmidt’s philosophy.
All this without losing the idea of wanting to play as a great team, of wanting to be an offensive team, a team that is too focused on itself – and that is also a defect, as has been seen in some games this season. But it will maintain the identity of having fast, forceful players, players who quickly bring the team closer to the opposite area.
I have to say that I think this is the best version of Roger Schmidt. And there is something curious about his career, his second season at a club is always better than the first. This will have to do with the implementation of ideas, the construction of the squad in light of his ideas. But now he will not have the wow factor that he had this season over his main rivals, something that allowed Benfica to be very strong at the start and that made Benfica gain an advantage difficult to lose.
Source: TSF
