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Finish the game against Gremio. Universidad Católica defeats the Brazilian team, get his first three points in the Copa Libertadores and Ariel Holan cuddles with his closest associates. She is, naturally, happy. And, intimately, a little calmer. The crusaders had fared badly in the continental competition: they accumulated the defeats against Internacional, in Porto Alegre, and América de Cali, in San Carlos de Apoquindo. Last night’s victory at the Las Condes campus revitalizes the aspiration for which the student leadership signed the strategist: transfer to the international concert the evident dominance that the UC exercises at the local level: it is two-time champion and leads, six points behind the University of Chile, the table of the current championship. In the strip they aspire to a quality leap that is graphed in the most important club tournament in this part of the world.
Holan convinces. It already generates the effect it intended on its players. And the footballers, to show the level that it demands of them. He had to figure it out. The pandemic prevented him for a long time from a key element for his method: group work. It was at that moment when the 61-year-old from Buenos Aires had to resort to technology to maintain and strengthen ties. “Recreating the costumes from Zoom was very important to us. Emotionally, the first objective before this unexpected change was to see how the players were, how they felt, and we did it through coaching sessions, we all listened to them. We communicated individually, by FaceTime, not by text message, to see each other and feel each other. And see how we could be useful in such a difficult and complicated time for each of us, “he said in June, in a webinar organized by the club.
But, of course, it was far from ideal. For this reason, in the prelude to the clash against the Gaúchos, he valued the four games they had been able to play. “Today’s team is very well prepared. He is very clear about the concepts both to defend and to attack “, he warned. It was proved.
The allusion to the forced change of relationship is not accidental. You have to dig a little into the definitions that he has given in his career to understand how important it is for his system, which some have come to call The Holan Method, permanent contact. “A coach has a game system. Each coach has his. There is a methodology related to that game system. To overturn that system or game idea you need no less than 30 or 35 workouts. There, the team must have a line of what you want. But there is also efficiency: which is how many games one needs to find the team to put on the pitch. That takes time. Always, the former are the hardest because there are the transitions of different processes, from coach to coach, neither better nor worse, different. It costs that period of adaptation, “he told the Conmebol website at the end of August.
And he insisted on a figure that is in no way whimsical: “Those 30 or 35 trainings have to be like the Bible: they are the commandments. There you have to build the structure of the team that you generally do on the first day of the preseason. But I like to plan by microcycles of a week “. His pupils already take his hand in style and planning. Much of it was taken from his past as a hockey coach. In that role, he became a Pan American medalist, leading Uruguay.
The UC that beat Gremio showed a convincing performance, which most likely fits the assimilation of its driver’s idea. It is difficult to find low points in his presentation against the Brazilians. He pressured his rival and took away spaces, an evidence of one of the coach’s principles of play, he was efficient and fast in the transition from defense to attack and, once he got the advantage, he managed it properly, with maturity, possession of the ball. He was even able to increase it. Another strong proof of the efficiency of a well-learned script is that Gremio did not kick at goal. That, plus the individual contribution of figures like the silent, but key Ignacio Saavedra and the most showy José Pedro Fuenzalida, Cesar Pinares and Edson Puch summarize a victory totally adjusted to the development of the meeting. Another deciding element: the initiator of the attacks is Matías Dituro, a requirement that is part of the coach’s principles.
Those of the strip not only improve in the soccer plane. Also on the physical plane. The demand in the works reaches such a point that on more than one occasion the players have asked him to regulate the loads. Now they begin to see the benefits. “I am demanding to try to get a performance that makes the team play good football and is dynamic. From that point of view, I am demanding. In this profession you need character. To lead a club with the prestige of Católica you have to be firm, have convictions and character, but good character, “he said in December, in an interview with La Tercera.
The leadership is also calmer. In the club they value the closeness in the relationship with the DT and its adaptation to institutional policies. Holan is not a technician who permanently overwhelms them, as has happened with some of his predecessors.
Technology plays a key role in the work of the trans-Andean technician. In the middle of the game against Gremio, the coach went into the bench, where one of his assistants was operating a computer, to review a play. That is precisely one of the characteristics of the work of the strategist and his assistants. “It gives all the possibilities in terms of videos, at the speed of having them fast to correct, both in training and in the halftime of games. For us it is important, because there is not only the word of the coach, but we also see it. You realize it faster, ”goalkeeper Matías Dituro told ESPN a few weeks ago.
The use of audiovisual resources is, indeed, instantly. In the middle of the game against Gremio, Holan went to the bench to review a play, a behavior that he also usually has in local tournament games. In fact, the notebook that one of his assistants manages is connected to the CDF transmission, of which, as an example, the technician reported in the game against Huachipato. “It was a goal, we already saw it,” he shouted before the VAR validated a goal by José Pedro Fuenzalida that, initially, had been annulled.
The student team trainings are recorded through drones, manipulated by the members of the audiovisual team that advises the trans-Andean. There are collaborators of the club and the strategist’s staff. And, as if that were not enough, in Argentina there is also a group that sends you information.
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