Football, they say, is a simple game. But not for some of the world's most successful coaches. They see football so beautiful – and crazy – complex. That is why many have turned to the 104-year-old French philosopher Edgar Morin for inspiration.
Morin is considered the father of complex thinking and his influence extends much further than football. It can be seen in how legendary coaches such as Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho perceive their role, continue to help his theories shape the modern game.
In Argentina, Cesar Luis Menotti, the World Cup-winning coach of 1978, gave a Morin book as a gift to Mauro Navas, the youth coach of Boca Juniors. Matias Manna, the analyst of Argentina during their World Cup profit of 2022, claims to have fallen in love with Morin's ideas.
In Portugal he is a reference for understanding the game, studied among the coaching schools in Madeira, Lisbon and Porto. Mourinho's methods are compared to Morin. Leonardo Jardim, the title -winning coach of Monaco in 2017, even met the philosopher.
Jardim says that “Morin helped me to build my methodology,” while his assistant Nelson Caldeira continues. “The common background among Portuguese coaches, this whole idea of complexity,” he says Sky Sports, “It has his roots in the ideas of Edgar Morin.”
Acacio Santos, another Portuguese coach, part of Nigeria's staff in the last Africa Cup of Nations, came to Morin via a different route. “It was in Barcelona, where I did my diploma,” he tells Sky Sports. “I learned about Morin in the classes of Paco Seirul·lo.”
Seirul·lo is apparently fitness coach at La Masia, but that hardly scratches the surface of his impact on Barcelona. He is considered the custodian of the flame, the father of the club's methodology. And seirul·lo itself says: “Edgar Morin is the father of all this.”
He refers to this idea of complexity. But what is it and why does it resonate so powerfully with some of the smartest spirits in football? For them it helps to understand a sport that, compared to many others, has an unusual number of moving parts.
Golfers can play the track. Players tears the board. Even double tennis has only two opponents to deal with. Team sports are losing a greater complexity because the movements of your own teammates and the opposition are constantly moving.
The possibilities are endless, no two scenarios the same. If that complicated in the first minute went the other way, the next 90 could have been completely different. For coaches, the urge to simplify all this is to bring an element of control to the chaos.
“Many coaches try to simplify things,” says Santos. “In Portugal, coaches such as Carlos Queiroz and Jesualdo Ferreira did something interesting in the 1980s – they simplified the complex structure of football. Four attack principles. Four defense principles.”
Those coaches came up with rules where players should stand and what they should do in those positions, even how their bodies should be placed. “I recorded all that information. It was great. But you learn to simplify things too much,” says Santos.
“Football is complex. Edgar Morin helped me to understand and accept this. I didn't want the recipe. I didn't want the pill. I wanted to understand why I went to Barcelona. And I found the answers of listening to Paco Seirul·lo.”
Santos remembers visits to La Masia and classes with Seirul·lo who opened his eyes. He would usually be in the middle rows. For Seirul·lo he moved forward after the first class. “I thought I would learn about muscles. But he spoke about society.”
There were also guest teachers. He remembers a conversation with Juanma Lillo, the old assistant and mentor of Guardiola. “He came to one of Paco's classes to explain his way to see society and the game.” Afterwards they had an enlightening conversation.
“As a coach I always tried to control everything. I spoke with Lillo about how I was building my team in the fourth division of Portugal. He told me that I was obsessed with control and that you cannot hope to be a good coach if you are obsessed with control.
“He said to me:” The beauty of our role is to offer the uncertainty, to offer chaos. And we bring the organization from the chaos. And again the chaos. And then you bring the organization. And then the chaos. And then the organization … “”
Speaking with Alfonso Montuori, a professor of the California Institute of Integral Studies, who has introduced a book with essays about complexity by Morin, he breaks out why coaches are attracted to these ideas. It is that balance between order and disorder.
“His work can really seem abstract because it is about a way of thinking that does justice to the complexity of life,” Montuori tells Sky Sports. “But when you apply it, it can help you to see the world in a different way that is extremely useful.”
He adds: “Fundamental for Morin's work is the idea of complexity and the way we think that the world tends to simplify excessively.” And that way of thinking goes much further than football. It can be applied to almost any aspect of human life.
“You often see reductionism, people who focus on the exclusion of everything else. You see people blaming immigrants for the misery of a country or they say that if they had a girlfriend, had money or fame, their lives would be good. It is more complex.
“Thinking about complexity means being aware of the context, of the connections, the interactions, dealing with the unforeseen, improvisation and that all our certainties can be blown out of the water before we are even aware of it.” Embrace the chaos.
“For Morin, disorder can also be a chance. The organization is becoming more fluid. The point is that it has not been determined. Every organization must be able to reorganize and save the environment – or the opponent, in this case – in mind instead of working in a vacuum.”
Montuori is an expert in the field of Morin, but he is also a football fan useful. Born in the Netherlands, he grew up and looked at the big Ajax team and his favorite player Piet Keizer. Morin's concepts can be related to the balance between team and individual.
“Morin argues that we should think of both, it's not or.” It is not about suppressing the individual because of the team. “Does this mean that I would lose my identity for the team? Are you going to say that to Messi or Pele or Cruyff? It's a team and player.”
Similarly, it is not an attack and defense, it is both. Santos remembers that he saw a head of newspaper when he was in Barcelona and looked at the side of Guardiola, who claimed that Barcelona was more compact than ever more defensively. He put it to Seirul·lo.
“He said:” We are not more compact. It is exactly the opposite. We are more plastic. We are more flexible. We have more freedom and less control. “But what for God's sake? How can you have less control, but better control the space and allow fewer goals?
“Now I understood that the best team in the world, probably one of the best in history, was more plastic than others, and this plasticity was one of the reasons why they could defend better. A light went into my brain. I realized that football was complex.”
Caldeira had a similar revelation when he started his own journey to Morin's ideas. “The idea that an organization can be reduced to a single player, for example,” he says. “Even Barcelona had to look beyond a fantastic star like Lionel Messi.”
He experienced that for himself in Monaco when they were able to end the reign of Paris Saint -Germain as champions of France – with the help of a teenager Kylian Mbappe. But long before that triumph there was criticism of their methods, even among the players.
Their first previous season that was in charge of Monaco would have been very different. “When I had been a player, we ran on the fields to get fit. It was completely separated from the technical work. But the idea of Edgar Morin is exactly the opposite.” So they went with that instead.
Football came out on the first day. “It was bizarre for the players.” And when Monaco started badly, the journalists had their explanation. “They said our approach was weak because we had not done the isolated physical exercises in the preseason,” says Caldeira.
“I remember that I told Leonardo that it was incredible because France should be the last country where these ideas of complexity are questioned, because it is Edgar Morin's land. In the next press conference he said exactly this to the journalists.”
Fortunately, history is written by the winners. “We were lucky. We won everything.” It was not long before this methodology, built on ideas that were conceived by Morin, cited as a reason for the stunning success of the club. “Edgar Morin himself visited us in Monaco.”
The concept of tactical periodization – often simplified, ironically, because recording physical training in addition to the technical and tactical one – is closely associated with Vitor Frade in Porto. Mourinho introduced similar methods such as English football with Chelsea.
Caldeira sees this all as strands of the same idea. Starting with Morin. “Vitor Frade was influenced by Edgar Morin. It was a mix of his experience as a fitness coach and the theoretical ideas of complexity. It is the common background of everyone,” he says.
“Luis Castro was influenced by Frade. Jose Mourinho and Marco Silva are closer to the ideas of the University of Lisbon, influenced by a very important professor there called Manuel Sergio.” Mourinho paid him to him when he died earlier this year.
“If you listen to all thinkers, the Portuguese school, the Argentinian school, you will always find that carrot.” The same intellectual process happened in Spain. “All physical studies to improve the power and speed were not from football,” says Santos.
“If you understand complexity, you understand that you have to prepare the players for complexity. No two dribbles are the same. You train for linear actions, but football is full of non-linear actions. That is why Paco Seirul·lo never repeats an exercise.”
This infinite complexity is part of the attraction of football. “It is easy to understand football, but because of the number of interactions, its depth and the level of analysis never end,” concludes Caldeira. “That's why I'm still so in love with the game.”
Santos agrees. “It is great for me now. Instead of having the recipe, I have to start thinking. In football there is so much information, so much to consider. It is difficult to feel comfortable with that complexity. But now I feel comfortable with the chaos.
“All because of Edgar Morin.”