FC Porto B thrives on first-team demands, says João Brandão | OneFootball

João Brandão sees FC Porto B’s season as a rather unusual balancing act: competing without ever losing sight of the mission to develop players. Between matching the team’s best-ever finish, fielding a younger average age, and constantly living with the demands of the first team, the coach painted the picture of a demanding season marked by adaptation. At the heart of it all was the idea that summed up the conversation: “They leave this year much better prepared.”

In the specific context of a B team at a club like FC Porto, the season is always lived at two speeds: that of immediate results and that of patiently building players for higher levels. It was in that space, between the competitive urgency of the Segunda Liga and the structural role of preparing players for the first team, that João Brandão gave his reading of what he considers a positive year, insisting on one word that runs through his whole discourse: preparation.

Asked to give an overall assessment of the season, the coach combined the numbers behind the team’s collective performance with what carries the most weight in a side of this profile: the development of young players and the ability to bring them closer to the club’s first-team reality.

“It was a positive season because we combined collective results with the development of our young players. The value of finishing fifth, matching our best-ever placing and points tally, and also recording the highest number of wins since the league has been played with 18 teams, takes on even greater meaning because we also introduced 11 players under the age of 18,” he said. “We also introduced two youth-team players and lowered the average age, which in recent years had been close to 22, down to 19. Taken together, it makes for a very successful season, never giving up on the B team’s great purpose, which is to prepare young players for the demands of the first team. And I think that point was achieved as well, with some debuts and others knocking on the door.”

The picture he leaves is of a season in which results did not come detached from player development, but precisely alongside it. It is in that balance, more than in any isolated statistic, that Brandão finds the measure of success and opens the way to the next theme: the kind of football this competition forces players to learn.

Asked whether that adaptation might make the football less aesthetic or appealing, João Brandão was clear about the specific nature of the Segunda Liga and what it demands from players used to more dominant contexts in youth football.

“The game played by a dominant team like ours in youth football is different from the Segunda Liga, which is very specific: the physical dimension, the duels, defensive organisation, the way we manage the emotional incidents of the game. And that was one area in which the team grew,” he explained. “It means they have to go through a phase of adaptation, but also of growth. They come out of the Segunda Liga context far better prepared for the depth of the game required by the first team and professional football. We always look at it as a challenge and not an obstacle, as an opportunity and not so much as something that might hold us back from performing well. Young players are highly valued and talked about for their technical qualities and their ability to unbalance opponents in attacking moments, but they leave this year much better prepared and with a much broader range of abilities for professional football.”

There is a strong idea here: the Segunda Liga does not appear as a brake, but as a workshop. Less of a shop window and more of a hard education, with more contact with everything the game has in terms of physical, emotional and tactical demands, in a process of development that Brandão sees as decisive for the next step.

When the conversation turned to the difficult start to the season, the coach pointed to several factors and described a period in which it was necessary to align methods, expectations and competitive focus in a particularly young group.

“There were several factors that contributed. The start was difficult because a new coaching staff arrived with the first team, bringing a different methodology. We had to create dynamics for using our players day to day and for helping in the preparation of their matches,” he analysed. “There was an emotional balancing process and a need to create focus with the players. Given what surrounds these young players in football today, the rush they feel to embrace new challenges and take the next steps, it was important to get their heads in the right place and for them to focus fully on the B team. Then, being such a young team and having so many players coming through the youth system, it was important to give them time and remain very resilient and very positive in the development of these young players. This adaptation process takes time; there is no way around it.”

That diagnosis moves away from simplistic readings of an uneven start and puts the emphasis on human management as much as tactics. More than expecting an immediate response, Brandão describes a process of consolidation in an environment where youth requires time and the world around football tends to deny it.

It was when he went into detail about the weekly work that the uniqueness of the B team’s role became most evident. Coexisting with the first team, led by Francesco Farioli, required almost daily flexibility, sometimes at the expense of preparing their own match.

“I’ll give the example of our match against Académico de Viseu, which coincided with Sporting-FC Porto. During the week, we were called several times to train with the first team, while we had dynamics, structures and behaviours similar to Sporting’s. This meant that our game, our preparation, was not the priority,” he described. “We arrived in Viseu having had one training session in which we looked at our own dynamics and our way of playing. The entire week was developed, both in training and through video, around behaviours that are not ours. To be even more precise, for example, on a set-piece behaviour, we worked on man-to-man marking whereas our principle is zonal. During the week, we developed a back five, and then arrived at the match with that not being our defensive structure, but a back four. In other words, there are behaviours, whether macro or much more individual, as also happened, that make it necessary to adapt certain dynamics and strategies. And, in that respect, the first team, the B team and the structure were fundamental in allowing us to minimise, in detail, the collateral effects of this fluidity and the constant call-up of B-team players.”

Brandão also detailed how often that collaboration took place throughout the season and the variety of solutions found to meet the first team’s needs.

“Yes, sometimes with a full team, at other times by unit, or more individually.”

The coach then explained how that work was requested by the first-team structure.

“They could call just the defence or the whole team to, mainly on the more acquisition-focused training days of the week, develop the opposition and the strategic plan of the opponent the first team was facing.”

More than simple occasional support, the picture drawn is that of a B team deeply integrated into the club’s daily workings. That makes the week less linear, more demanding and, at the same time, closer to what awaits these players in high-level competitive environments.

That led to another inevitable question: to what extent did the B team also have to incorporate ideas or principles from the first team into its own play? Brandão answered without hiding the complexity of that balance.

“That was the big step we took as a coaching staff. We always had a great capacity to adapt, to reflect, to analyse in depth and to prepare the next match very well, distinguishing what was fundamental from what was secondary,” he stressed. “To give a few examples: we have our game model and principles, our structure, the behaviours we want to see developed in the different moments of the game, with the ball, without the ball, set pieces, transitions, and so on. But then we had to respect what the week’s work had been, whether collectively, by unit or individually. For example, our full-backs trained during the week with the first team in positions designed to provide width and depth down the flank, whereas our idea is for the full-backs to come inside and progress from deeper areas. We had to manage our match plan, because it might have been beneficial for us to have one full-back deeper and the other more advanced, but we also had to take into account what that player’s process during the week had been.”

It is in that management between identity and circumstance that Brandão places one of the season’s greatest merits. The team did not stop having a model, but learned to live with deviations, adjustments and compromises imposed by a reality permanently linked to the first team.

Faced with the amount of information and the different stimuli falling on such young players in the same week, the coach rejected any tone of complaint and preferred instead to return to the word he repeated most throughout the conversation: opportunity.

“We always looked at it as an opportunity. We never held on to complaints or excuses, but to the challenge of doing better with what we have,” he assured. “I look back and see that the coaching staff and the players are much richer in terms of their knowledge of the game, much better prepared for the challenges the game itself and the opponent create for us, as a result of this process. The diversity of behaviours they were forced to understand and develop led to a tactical flexibility that, right now, is an advantage for us as a team and for the players in their future.”

In the end, João Brandão’s view is based less on the purity of the process and more on the richness it leaves behind. In a year marked by constant call-ups, fine adjustments and accelerated learning, FC Porto B emerges, in his reading, as a space where competing and developing did not cancel each other out; they pushed each other forward.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.