Jamaica's football history
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Rick Figueiredo Speaks Reggae Boyz Football
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
The following is an RBSC interview with Rick Figueiredo, football Tactical Analyst during Rene Simoes' tenure with the Reggae Boyz. We know you will enjoy his wonderful insight about the game he continues to spell as futebol.
This is the first segment of a most interesting and lengthy interview which he graciously agreed to give during the last week of September. The interviewer is RBSC reporter Mosiah Marshall.
Enjoy!
MM. How did you get to where you are today? Tell us a little about your upbringing and career path.
RF. I grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil during the time Pele and Garrincha played futebol, the 1950's. I learned the game on cobble-stoned streets playing barefoot against other Brasilians. My father and mother were both Americans.
My first real experience with professional football was with Brasil in the 1994 World Cup. Before that I coached women's youth futebol in the United States.
Sometime in 1994, the developer of the program 'SoftSport' the program that I mostly use to analyze tactical movements - his name is Zvi Friedman, asked me to be a liaison between Carlos Parreira (the Brasilian coach at the time) and himself. We acted more as consultants than team staff but it was an opportunity to meet players such as Dunga and Leonardo and work with Parreira and Mario Zagalo. Two things I learned from Brasil: 1) they wanted to know how the ball traveled, in which patterns, from the defense to the penalty box of the opposition and; 2) who on the Brasilian team was making the mistakes. Simple but a powerful road map to success.
In 1993, Rene Simoes visited Thousand Oaks to do a youth camp for me. During this time he taught me more than I had learned about the game in the previous 40 years of my life.
In 1996 while in Sao Paulo I ran into Rene and he told me he was coaching the Jamaican National Team. He was extremely optimistic at the time about the physical and athletic ability of the players. He said that with discipline the team had a chance of making the World Cup.
In 1997 he called me and asked if I would like to work with him during World Cup qualifying. He explained that the budget was low and that he could only cover my expenses. I remember having to pay for my own plane tickets but he covered the rest - I'm not sure if he did it out of his own pocket or if the Federation handled this.
My first game analysis was of the USA as we prepared for the 1997 game in Kingston. The USA at that time was a better, more organized team than Jamaica. They were able to pass the ball more precisely and with more speed. In essence, as in any industry, the faster and more efficiently you do the same thing as your opponent, the more successful you will be. It was also a matter of organization. Team organization creates the framework and foundation for potential success.
MM. What have you been up to since you left our shores?
RF. Mostly coaching youth soccer in the United States. I developed 3 teams 3 years ago, U10's for the Southern California League. One of my teams defeated the State champions 6-2 after a 5-0 halftime lead. And this was in their first year as a team!
The first and most important aspect of creating championship teams is recruiting. You need the right players in the right positions. You don't have the one-armed player do throw-ins.
Futebol is a highly complex game that can sometimes be broken down into very simple principles. Creating space and executing your technical skills efficiently creates opportunity for victory. I have written a book called 'The Futebol Generals' that breaks down much of what I learned from the great coaches in the world, together with inside stories about the Jamaican's Road to France. This can be purchased if you e-mail me at rick@rickfigueiredo.com.
As you may remember, after Rene, I worked with Lazaroni, a very different coach then Rene. Laza had this personality about him that was very powerful. His tactical decisions, although definitely based on experience, was also expressed through his very powerful personality. He unfortunately came to Jamaica during a transition period, and his main experience with the team came in Brasil where he did not have access to the top players in Jamaica, for various reasons.
I remember spending many hours with him showing him video of players like Paul Hall and Theodore Whitmore and Laza would say, that is what I need.
Eventually, he grew frustrated because he was losing games in Brasil, and in some ways being embarrassed and at the same time he was unable to get Jamaica, at that particular time, to bring him the players he needed to build the team up again. Before the game with Athletico Mineiro, he decided to resign. It was a sad moment for me as I liked Laza both as a coach and a friend.
MM. We know that you were the computer analyst for the Reggae Boyz. What is the value of statistics in football?
RF. If we are to break down sports that are played with a ball, the essential basics are numbers and angles.
Numbers do not lie though one can of course slant them to serve ones own point of view. It is important not to do this if you want to make great use of numbers and stats. They paint an interesting story of who does what, how many times, and how efficiently.
With numbers one can begin to design the tactics of the team. You match up those who have success against the opposition players that have weaknesses. As Sun Tzu the Chinese tactician said, the war is won before the war is fought. When asked about his secret in getting a not guilty verdict for O.J. Simpson, Johnnie Cochran said it was 3 things: preparation, preparation and preparation.
My computer analysis starts with the accumulation of events that produce numbers. I run the video of the game from start to finish and record who touched the ball and where on the field those touches occurred.
When I run the analysis, it produces angles and graphs that give me something that looks like spaghetti on the field. It shows me where we connected successful passes and where we did not. It shows me in what part of the field more passes for us and for them occur.
This leads us to the 5 point or what I call 'dice patterns.' If you look at the 5 on a dice, the 5 marks or points, you have 2 on one side, 1 in the middle and 2 on the opposite side. Place this on the futebol field, 2 on each side of the center line, with the middle mark in the center circle. Now if your graph and team distribution is well balanced, your passing concentration will be at 5 equal or near equal amounts at the location of these 5 points or marks. The movement of these 5 points indicate the tactical movements of a team.
As an example of what we can do with this information: Before we played Honduras in 2002 World Cup qualifying, I showed Clovis Oliveira, the Technical Director of the team, a graph of the Honduras team that showed that their patterns were very well designed but that they had a certain length and number of passes to them, especially in mid-field. They would bring the ball up the lateral side of the right or left field from defense in very designed sequences, 4-5 passes before they were deep enough to cross the ball into the penalty box. By attacking and pressing them at certain locations in midfield (and not in others) we were able to force this team to add 1-2 more passes before they reached the point where they would cross the ball. This created 2 extra opportunities for us to force mistakes.
MM. If you were head coach of an EPL club, how would you go about deciding on which players you would acquire for your team?
RF. Using the above-mentioned analysis, scouting becomes more of a science than a 'feeling.' This is not to say that the coach's intrinsic experience is nullified or diminished but that when you can back up your thoughts and inclinations with exact numbers, it strengthens your position. It does not matter if you are scouting English Premier League teams or youth teams, the principles are the same. What is getting the job done, and this does not always mean scoring goals but it also means who is doing the 'dirty work' on the field and making the least amount of mistakes possible and connecting passes that develop into goal scoring opportunities.
That is why players such as Peter Cargill were so important for the team. He was the sheriff, the ball stealer, the Dunga of our team. He created transition from defense to offense.
When I studied Dunga for Brasil, I found him to be an exceptional ball stealer and after the theft he passed off to someone who was a playmaker. He knew his limitation.
Let's take the Dunga position one step further: Juan Veron of Argentina in 1998 was both a ball thief and a playmaker so he could accumulate up to 140 touches on the ball in a 90 minute game. Dunga would average 90. Most forwards average 30, defenders 50 and very good midfielders 70-80. So imagine the impact of 140 touches on the ball with an 80% success ratio. That means he only lost the ball 1 out of 5 times. Your efficiency percentage for Jamaica at their best was 70% as a team. Most of the time it is close to 65%. Brasil and Argentina run close to 80-82%. Now you begin to see the importance of connecting passes.
There is a simple reason why teams are more successful than others. Rene was a great fan of team passing numbers. Brasil can pass 700 times in a game. Mexico 600. Argentina 700. China maybe 450.
Jamaica in the USA 1997 home qualifying game had 450. I remember how at the beginning before I gave him the analysis of the game Rene would guess at the number of passes his team had. He was 20% off then but slowly grew to count passes more accurately.
Before we played the USA in DC for 1998 qualifying he told the team that we needed 600 passes to be competitive in this game. Jamaica had 595 passes in this game with Whitmore having one of his most incredible games ever!
So to get to the point of your question, after one ascertains the value of the player through one's experience and knowledge of the game, one adds the number of passes and efficiency to that analysis and arrives at a more complete understanding of a player's value to the team and effect on the outcome of the game.
MM. How much of an influence were you for Simoes? Were you contracted to make regular reports on games or only when asked?
RF. To exactly determine how much influence I personally had on Rene would be presumptuous of me. You would have to ask him that question. I do know that he kept on asking me to come back and do more analysis for him so what I was giving him was obviously helping him decide some of the tactics he would use. I truly consider Rene to be a genius when it comes to analyzing this game and understanding human nature.
Aside from Rene, I was greatly influenced by Captain Burrell, his focus and sense of accomplishment. The man is a great businessman working under very difficult and political circumstances. He has a powerful personality and an innate sense of what is needed to achieve success. Just his decision alone to hire Rene was historic for the success of the Jamaican program.
Irrespective of what he may do in the future or whether you like his decisions or not, he has left his mark in Jamaican futebol history forever. I remember riding in the car with the Captain one afternoon as he conducted Federation business and I marveled at his ability to negotiate. In addition to the Captain, the foundation and workhorse of the team is Horace Reid. I very much believe that without Horace the team may not have reached the heights it did reach.
MM. If you were given the task of leading Jamaica's quest for World Cup 1998 or later 2002, in hindsight, what would you have done differently?
RF. This of course is a question drenched in potential pitfalls but I will venture to answer it anyway; albeit in a roundabout manner.
In regard first to the 1998 World Cup: It took me 6 months, working 12 hours per day to come up with a 500 page report on each team. I knew Croatia, Argentina and Japan inside out, probably better than most of these team's coaches. I remember how during the world cup games I almost instinctively felt what they were about to do in their pass patterns. If I could have projected my thoughts directly into each of our player's head, it would have been an interesting thing to see what would have resulted. But then again I was not a player and perhaps only 20-25% of what I knew could be assimilated by players and coaches.
There was something that through osmosis I acquired from inputting data from so many games into the computer. After a while I just seem to know what was going to happen. That is why during our trip to Brasil during the Lazaroni era, I convince Laza to let me have players input the information into the computer with me. Peter Cargill and some other players had to sit with me and trudge through this task. At first they would do so begrudgingly but as they worked their way through the game I would ask them what they were learning about the opponent and they began to feel patterns of the game they had not noticed before.
Ask Peter today what he thought? He was a great admirer of information this program disseminated for him as a player and coach.
To get to the heart of the answer, I would have had key playmakers on our team work with me inputting games into the computer; as an assistant I perhaps could have been more persuasive in having Rene do a few games on the computer himself, as well. I would have taken more time in training our team in more specific areas such as how to counter the opposition's patterns and sequences.
I find that most coaches fall victim to the posturing of 'we will play our game and let the other team adjust.' That is ok if you are Brasil or Argentina or Holland or Germany but for the rest of the world, every bit of information and knowledge about your opponent and learning how to defend against those forces counts! When you play great teams like Argentina, you need to enter the game in a defensive posture. Do not make the mistake that you are equal, that you can compete when you actually cannot on a talent to talent level. I thought Argentina was a 3-4 goal favorite going into that world cup game.
So you need to play the game on an additional level. You need to be able to anticipate what they will do. That will be your advantage!
Walter Gama had a great idea before the Croatian game: have the practice squad wear Croatian uniforms. This way one begins to acclimate visually to the opposition. Of course, you begin to see the enormity of the preparation for such a tactical sequence. Where do we stop and say enough, we do not want to overdo the information as players need to play instinctively as well. Too much info can cause a short circuit in some players.
The quest for qualification in 2002 was different. Different coach, different ideas and different level of experience. Clovis was and will always be one of my best friends. He is a man with great heart and passion for many things in life. Clovis was faced with a different set of problems.
Just to begin with different players create different chemistry and sometimes different results. A goal here and there, ball bouncing one way instead of another and we go to Japan. Make no mistake about this, Clovis was not that far off from qualifying us for 2002. It was close enough statistically.
Where Clovis and Rene differ was in discipline. Not everyone has the innate ability to instill discipline, and sometimes fear of failure into a team as Rene was able to do. If you study very successful coaches around the world you come to realize that there are 2 types of coaching philosophies. The democratic way and the dictatorship way. The dictatorship way is probably 90% more successful than the democratic way but you must have a Napoleonic personality to execute this philosophy. Not all of us have that in us. Could I successfully coach the Jamaican national team?
MM. It has been discussed on our website that what the Reggae Boyz is missing is a strong defensive midfielder, like a Claude Makalele. Which Reggae Boy is best suited as a defensive midfield king?
RF. I apologize for not being able to at present answer this question. I am only partially familiar with the talent evaluation of the present crop of Jamaican players. I would have to study the last 5-10 games to give you an educated and more correct opinion on this issue. What I do know is what we need on defense, on any team that has hopes of succeeding, is a sheriff like Goodison in his prime.
MM. Given our talents, which formation do you believe would be most effective for us?
RF. In 1998 the 5-3-2 or 3-5-2 was pretty successful for us.
Given our technical match-ups with world class teams it was a good idea to stretch the field laterally to give us more time to control and execute our thought patterns. The 3-5-2 is a comfortable system which if physically fit, a team can use to it's advantage. The problems arise in transition from offense to defense. If your laterals are too far forward, the ball can be played behind them and this is a game of numbers. If they have 5 on 4 or 5 on 3 their chances for better scoring opportunities is magnified.
The one thing I noticed in the last Gold Cup was that we can be a very 'aggressive' team. That causes disruption in the opposition's game. Even Brasil does not like to be manhandled. The Jamaican player has an amazing physical strength. Just look at track and field. I would definitely use that power but always continue to develop the technical and tactical skills of the team in conjunction with that physical solution. We want to be competitive. Sometimes how we do it, as long as it is within the bounds of the rules, is admissible.
MM. Would you practice various formations depending on the opposition?
RF. Generally, I feel that a team needs to find its formation and stick with it. Changing formations too often or sometimes at all totally scrambles the passing and defending schemes of a team. Though it may fix some problems it invariably creates others.
MM. Why was Rene Simoes such a strong believer in the 5-3-2 formation for the Reggae Boyz?
RF. I partially answered that above. The 2nd reason is that we had the players that fit into that scheme more comfortably. The 4-4-2 takes a higher level of technical skill. I am not saying that we were deficient in technical skills but go back to what I said above. There are 4-5 elite teams in the world. To go into a game against them thinking you can compete technically is ignorant. You need to understand what you are up against and anticipate as much as possible to be able to level the competing grounds. Games are won and lost not only because of skill level and match-ups but sometimes games are won because of tactical prowess. There are games you can only counter-attack. There are games that you cannot play 'pretty.' The objective is results. Wins create financial windfalls. Losses do not.
Editor's note:
Part 2 of this interview will follow on Sunday, October 12th.
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