Why does this methodology help?

“Also, the fact that tactical periodisation has a different understanding of the game and the human body, fitness coaches and all the sport science staff tend to see it as a threat to their role. But there are no objective reasons for that. Under tactical periodisation everyone can participate. It’s just a different approach. One that we believe leads to better football.”

Carvalhal is reluctant to boil down 30 years of study into a 30-minute conversation. Given that Frade himself recently concluded a conference on tactical periodisation with a lengthy outburst detailing everything that tactical periodisation is not, perhaps that is understandable. His former student is anxious to stress that true understanding takes time.

"There are very few people who understand the theory 100 per cent because to learn this you must go more deep than just reading one or two books," says Carvalhal. "I studied three years just on football with Vitor Frade to understand the theory but there are some people who talk about tactical periodisation who do not understand tactical periodisation.

"Some people think that just by integrating their pre-season training they are automatically doing tactical periodisation, but they are not. It's not like that. You can't really understand it unless you understand complexity theory. We learnt a lot of things outside of football. When you have this all in your brain, it all starts to become clear to you. But it takes study."

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Even so, Carvalhal believes that coaches at all levels can find a way to utilise this methodology. "Maybe the theory is complex but the practice is very simple," he adds. "You are training every day to play better football and improve the players and the team. We are training the game. And because we are training the game, we start by playing the game."

The result is that teams adopting tactical periodisation have the chance to focus more on game preparation, giving them the opportunity to be more tactically sophisticated as they are not wasting precious training ground time in a fragmented way. This is much more than just training without the football, it is a holistic approach to the game of football.

The physical work still gets done but it gets done in other ways.

Image: Carlos Carvalhal is a follower of Frade and a believer in tactical periodisation "It changes the role of the fitness coach a lot," explains Carvalhal, now coaching Rio Ave in the Portuguese top division. "Rui Faria was not a fitness coach under Jose Mourinho. I do have someone at Rio Ave who is a fitness coach. He does the warm-ups but he is not there to improve the physical part of the players, he is not there for that.

"The physical part is very important but look at the GPS of our players. They run a lot with high intensity both with and without the ball but they run differently because they are running with an idea of how to help the team. They don't run around the pitch or up the mountain. They run playing football. They probably run more than if there wasn't a ball."

This is a point that Terry, the long-time Chelsea captain, made about Mourinho's sessions. "We probably covered more distance with the ball than we would have done without it," he said. The difference is that players tend to enjoy this more than if they were on the running track or in the classroom watching videos. Bringing it together makes for a happier squad.

"Players enjoy this way of working," says Carvalhal. "When I first went to England with Sheffield Wednesday, the reaction from the players was amazing. It was very hard but it was more attractive to them to train in the way that we wanted to play. They were excited about it, especially in the first year, when it was new to them, and they received the ideas well."

Is this the future of football coaching?
This question of player satisfaction is an interesting one given the noises coming out of the Manchester United camp. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has made fitness a priority in pre-season with Marcus Rashford and Scott McTominay speaking positively about the experience. McTominay has suggested that many of the squad have never done work like it before.

However, there have also been reports of unhappiness from unnamed players because of the amount of running in pre-season. Understandably, there is little sympathy among supporters. The idea of the team working hard in pre-season appeals to the public. But are they working smart? That's the question that interests advocates of tactical periodisation.

> In Porto, because we have the culture of this methodology, if you don't follow it then, let me tell you, the players will not follow it. They will ask you why they are being told to run around a pitch when they are footballers.

"With so many teams doing it so well, what becomes difficult is what happens afterwards when you leave and another manager comes in with different ideas," says Carvalhal. "This is very difficult for some players because they were working to improve their game and if they smell this improvement I don't know any player who doesn't want to become better.

"In Porto, because we have the culture of this methodology, if you don't follow it then, let me tell you, the players will not follow it. They will not understand you. They will ask you why they are being told to run around a pitch when they are footballers. Portuguese managers work with the ball. Mourinho was working like this a long time ago.

"This is the Portuguese way."

It might not be the Manchester United way right now but the direction of travel in football coaching suggests that there are more and more believers in tactical periodisation. More and more who believe in the methodology of a man called Vitor Frade.