16/08/2026
⚽ Can physical preparation be separated from the Game?
For decades, football training was organised into isolated components: strength, endurance, speed, technique and tactics.
But is this how the player actually performs?
Inspired by Miguel Lopes' reflections, this carousel explores why the player cannot be understood as the sum of separate parts, and why Tactical Periodisation® places the Game at the centre of the entire training process.
Because preparing a player physically is, above all, preparing them to play.
🎓 Discover more in the Physical Preparation in Football Course.
09/08/2026
Congratulations to Carlos Carvalhal on his appointment as Head Coach of FC Famalicão.
We wish him and his coaching staff every success in this new chapter.
May this journey be marked by clear ideas, meaningful work and a strong identity on the pitch.
Best of luck, Coach!
03/08/2026
🧠 Football Is Not Played by Muscles Alone
Tactical Periodisation® has always rejected the artificial separation between the physical, technical, tactical, cognitive and emotional dimensions of performance.
Every decision, every movement and every interaction expresses all of them simultaneously.
Recent reflections from neuroscience point in the same direction.
A muscle is not simply contractile tissue.
It is also information, perception, memory, anticipation and decision.
The footballer's body is not a machine executing commands.
It continuously interprets the Game, recognises patterns, anticipates events and adapts its actions to the demands of the context.
Perhaps this is why an injury should not be understood only as tissue damage.
It may also represent a disruption in the relationship between the brain and the muscle, between perception and action, between the player and the Game itself.
Because understanding football also means understanding the invisible relationships that sustain performance.
01/08/2026
🧠 The Game That Cannot Be Seen
— Vítor Frade
Some ideas cannot be reduced to definitions.
Some are better expressed through poetry.
In these handwritten verses, Vítor Frade reflects on one of football's least visible dimensions: the relationship between performance, recovery, adaptability and specificity.
More than a poem, it is an invitation to think about the invisible dimensions of the Game.
Because what truly sustains performance cannot always be measured, it must first be understood.
27/07/2026
🧠 Training Is Playing
What if training was never separated from the Game?
In Tactical Periodisation®, learning, adaptation and performance emerge through playing, not through the fragmentation of physical, technical and tactical components.
⚽ The objective of training is not the ball itself.
It is the Game.
This infographic presents some of the fundamental principles behind Vítor Frade's methodology:
• Training is Playing. Learning to Play... by Playing.
• Replace "early specialisation" with early specificity.
• Progress from complex simplicity towards complex complexity.
• Organise training through the logic of the Game, not through isolated components.
Because football cannot be understood by separating its parts.
It can only be understood by respecting the complexity of the whole.
👉 Swipe through the infographic and discover the philosophy behind Training Is Playing.
09/08/2026
03/08/2026
01/08/2026
27/07/2026