The former captain of the Brazilian football team is in the spotlight of the sports press, which is why almost everything is known about those who previously held this position, and there is a lot of information about both their professional activities and their private life. Fernando Deniz Quite an exception. Neither the English nor the Portuguese sources record whether he had children, whether he had a wife, or what he did in his spare time. His available biography is incomplete, very poor.
in 1974 Patos de MinasBorn and has eight siblings. He started playing football when Brazilian football sponsorship was very high: while he was playing in midfield at Juventus in Sao Paulo, the Romarios won the World Cup in the United States.
Deniz has never been a model of club loyalty: in 1996 he moved to Palmeirasbut a year later in the biggest rival in São Paulo, A.J CorinthiansPlaying soccer in two seasons later, he was interested Parana, so he moved his headquarters to Rio. the FluminenseHe spent the most time playing in 101 matches.
At that time, he was at his peak, but he was not talented enough to be called up to the national team. Since then, he has been able to play less and less, although he also won the state championship with Cruzeiro after Palmeiras, Corinthians and Fluminense. From the age of 33, he went on to manage the Brazilian Second Division and retired from Gama (not Vasco da Gama…) in 2008.
Brazilian tiki-taka
Almost immediately he got a job as a coach, prof Campeonato Paulista He started working on his third line. His career got off to a great start, winning the championship in his first season with his team, the A’s FuturateAnd even when he was invited by his former team, Paulista, he raced for the gold medal there, too. the Botafogo It would have been his first major pitch, but he was suspended after four games. It was the same way Atlético SorocabaVale, who was promoted without success from the second division of São Paulo, was invited by the club’s management.
He stayed in São Paulo, but started working in a suburb of Osasco. the audax He called him, and his name merged with the club over time. After his departure, he was called up three times, and in his first stint he played football without precedent in that region. As a result of his work, he was named Paulista Coach of the Year in 2016.
At this time, his coaching style was called “dinizismo”, and in Brazil the introduction of tiki-taka is associated with his name, which is why he is also called the Brazilian Guardiola. However, he does rebel against this, and we’ll get to why in a moment.
Diniz led his team to the state finals in 2016, where he was Santos He stood in the way of Audax – Patina won 2-1 on aggregate – regardless, the club made a huge progression, especially in the knockout stage, and that was largely due to the coach. Diniz has developed Audax’s positional play to a very high level, but fundamentally distinguishes his style from Guardiola’s.
“With him, the players keep their positions in the part that the team has just reached. My team plays completely differently, we change positions frequently and dynamically, it’s a different kind of collaboration.”
According to experts, there is more elegance in Diniz’s positional game, and according to his belief, creative players have more freedom in the concept of this game than other coaches who also support positional play. Because of the tightness of the field, it is not uncommon for Diniz teams to congregate six or seven players in one area of the field in order to fight their way to the goal.
According to the coach himself, he wants to dominate the matches with his team, and at the same time he wants to entertain the spectators, but he does not achieve his goal by creating free zones and preserving positions, but by creating perfect harmony. between players (relationship). The tools for this are the constant impact, creation of one-on-one situations, spontaneous and instinctive solutions, body tricks and dense vertical passes, which make the game of Diniz’s current team, Fluminense, so spectacular, but compared to the stylistic features of European-style positional football, all This is like messy soccer at times.
“My understanding is that life is more about art than science. What is artistic leaves a mark and moves people.”
medium.com quotes him.
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It is noteworthy that Deniz is not only trying to improve the relations between his players with the tools of professional football: he graduated from the University of São Paulo with a degree in psychology. He is far from authoritarian, as he put it in one place:
“My best teachers have given me a lot of freedom, which most players are not used to. I try to create an environment for them where everyone can express their opinion, and so everyone can feel like they are part of a community, while we create together. It’s something vibrant and organically evolving.”
currently Manchester Unitedplay in it Anthony Between 2019-2020, Deniz A Sao PauloAnd it also supports what Deniz is talking about, ie the football team must create an environment that footballers love and can create:
“The kind of coach who helps you if you make a mistake, even if the crowd boos. He is always by your side. Deniz is without a doubt one of the best coaches I have ever worked with.”
the FluminenseWith his victory rate of 57 percent since last year quite impressive, and thanks to his professional results last year (winning the Guanabara Cup, title in the Carioca tournament), in July Diniz secured the temporary position of captain of the Brazilian national team – in the meantime, he continues to coach Fluminense. until next june, Carlo Ancelotti He will hold the position of captain until his arrival.
It should not be forgotten that although Fluminense is playing an irresistible match with Diniz, the Carioca State title was the coach’s first major title, even though this is his fourteenth year as coach. At Audax he was only really successful in his first stint, and that was in 2018 Atlético ParanaenseWho, and a year later also the flu, so that his team was in the relegation zone. After that, he could not make a breakthrough in Santos and Vasco da Gama either.
The 49-year-old is facing an exciting challenge, and the Brazilian team, which reached the quarter-finals in the World Cup in Qatar, will certainly play a completely different match with him than before. Tetewith. On the part of the federation, it is doubtful whether it was a good decision to appoint one of the most advanced local coaches for one year, because it is not certain that his unique style and theoretical methods can be transferred to Ancelotti’s school of football. We’ll find out soon enough.
Featured image: Getty Images
