Big Phil’s secret weapon
| Brazil’s coach Luis Felipe Scolari has turned to a psychotherapist to help him sort 40 or 50 of the world’s most talented players into what he and Brazil hope will be an unbeatable team
NOW that the draw is over and as the 32 teams anxiously await the start of the 2014 Fifa World Cup, nowhere is the pressure as great as in Brazil.
Careers for Brazil’s players, coaches and team officials hinge on whether the team lifts the trophy. Concerns about the astronomical costs of hosting the World Cup may be, at least temporarily, assuaged by victory. Even the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, has a stake — political analysts believe Rousseff may coast to re-election if Brazil win.
It is a load to bear, and at the centre of it all is Brazil’s coach, Luis Felipe Scolari, an affable barrel of a man known as Big Phil. So far he has embraced the pressure with his two sizable hands.
“We are the hosts,” he said, “so that means the minimum we have to do — the minimum — is win.”
To help navigate his highwire performance, he has enlisted the help of a surprising weapon: a psychotherapist.
Regina Brandao, a professor at Universidade Sao Judas Tadeu in Sao Paulo, has been a member of Scolari’s team since the late 1990s. She may not be an expert in soccer strategy but she has evaluated each Brazilian player to help Scolari sort 40 or 50 of the world’s most talented players into what he and Brazil hope will be an unbeatable 23-man team.
“My job is to draw up a psychological profile of each of the players,” Brandao said in a rare interview. “It is to help Scolari with the individual and the collective. It is to understand how each player feels and how that affects the way they play.”
Jurgen Klinsmann had his players work with a sports psychologist before Germany hosted the 2006 World Cup. And although it might seem counter-intuitive to some coaches who seek to project their own attitude and expect — or at least hope — that the players will react to it, Scolari consciously strives to be a chameleon. Brandao is the one who helps him decide which colour to be for each particular team and for each individual player.
To do this, Brandao has Scolari’s players complete a series of questionnaires. A copy of one was shared with this writer, and its breadth is considerable.
The players are asked to use a sliding scale to rank how affected they think they are by certain events. They rank their reactions on a numerical scale that uses a series of smiley faces to gauge positive reactions, or frowns to do the opposite.
Some of it seems basic — asking, for example, to rate how it feels to “score a goal against your own team.” The key, according to Brandao, is in the degree of each player’s reaction, but also in the comparisons that can be made with other players.
As part of her work with Scolari, Brandao compiled data from players on the national teams of Saudi Arabia and Portugal — two of the more than 20 teams Scolari has managed in more than three decades as a coach. Comparing the players’ data, Brandao said, allows Scolari to draw on his experiences as he formulates a plan with his current roster.
Sometimes the numbers are especially illuminating. For example, Brandao’s analysis indicated that Brazilian players and Portuguese players, who share a common language and are often linked culturally, handle most situations in opposite ways.
Portuguese players generally were more neutral with their emotions, Brandao said, finding positive motivation in events that Brazilians typically said were clearly negative, such as being given a yellow card.
Brazilians, on the other hand, were more extreme with their emotions and more prone to distraction related to external issues. For instance, Brandao’s analysis found that Scolari needed to be more sensitive towards players nearing the end of the contracts with their club teams; they might be concerned about their professional future.
Brandao’s data also provides guidance on more concrete matters. While some coaches — including Klinsmann, now the United States national team manager — like to keep their starting lineups secret until close to game time to keep their players motivated, Brandao advised Scolari to be open about which players would be starting. Her studies found that Brazilian players were more at ease if they knew their status earlier.
“Brazilian players often have a different perception of the same situations than other players,” Brandao said. “It’s a real cultural question, the way they behave and the way they behave differently than others. They are much more intense than players from other countries, whether it’s for the good or bad. Managing the emotions is critical for Scolari.”
Brandao meets the players individually on many occasions and then counsels Scolari on important decisions. When Scolari was the coach of Portugal when it hosted the European Championship in 2004, Brandao’s analysis of the players’ leadership qualities led Scolari to name the veteran forward Nuno Gomes as his captain, with Cristiano Ronaldo — the team’s best player — as his deputy.
With Brazil, Brandao’s breakdown of the players’ emotional state helps Scolari shape his messages to the team, a group scattered among clubs around the globe that gathers only sporadically for national team training camps and games. It has been a successful partnership: Scolari led Brazil to the World Cup title in 2002.
“Our players are very skilled, some of the most skilled in the world,” Scolari said. “But what really matters is what type of people they are. Some are more melancholic, some are more aggressive. This is the scientific part. This is how we win.”
That is why Scolari is consulting with Brandao continually. That is why he was so concerned about the draw this week, which determined Brazil’s first three opponents. That is why he wrote a letter to his players in June imploring them to treat the Confederations Cup — a tournament few outsiders will remember — as sacred.
He crafted it in a hotel suite in Rio de Janeiro the night before the final against Spain, writing with passion and filling two pages with a menagerie of
Regina Brandao, above, a professor at Universidade Sao Judas Tadeu in Sao Paulo, may not be an expert in soccer strategy, but she has drawn up a psychological profile of each player
motivational phrases (“YOU are the special people”) and flowery exhortations (“the sun’s smile, with its rays of hope, is there to say: go and fulfil your journey”).
Scolari included quotations from Martin Luther King jnr and Walt Disney. He then slipped the letter under the door of each player’s room. The players who received it, hours before they were to face Spain in the final of a World Cup warm-up tournament, immediately understood its purpose — they won 3-0.
“Everything we do, every game we play, makes the whole country go up and down,” the forward Fred said. He shrugged. “Felipao,” he said, using Scolari’s nickname, “he helps us handle the feeling that people will die if we don’t win.”
Ostensibly, Fred was exaggerating, but there is no denying that Brazil’s state of mind is inextricably linked to the performance of its national soccer team. Among the regular talking points are sometimes conflicting desires about style. Which is more important, the question goes: to win, or to play beautifully?
For Scolari, there is nothing to debate. He smirked when the question was raised, as if he had long ago tired of it.
“I am criticised in Brazil for saying what I think, but I believe if you can’t play beautifully and win, you need to play in another way,” he said. “You need to play ugly. For me, playing beautifully and winning is great but playing beautifully and losing is horrible. Whoever says the opposite is an idiot.”
He took a sip of water and winked at his assistant. “If we can, we will play the beautiful game and win,” he said. “If not, we will just win.”— © The New York Times