Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2023

/61 I’m the physical performance coordinator and I work transversally through the sub academy, academy, and professional side, leading a team of 16 conditioning coaches. I’d never recruited anyone before, until five years ago, when I had to change the entire team of conditioning staff, which was challenging. My view on recruitment has changed quite a lot through time. Initially I had a very robust, hard skill focused recruitment. Over time, I’ve learned that hard skills are quite easy to evaluate. A CV tells you a lot about hard skills, but not so much about soft skills. Now I’m a bit more informal in the way I recruit. I like to see people in action, how they behave, how they interact with players, and with others. I cannot always recruit globally because of the language barrier, but Portugal is a small country, so everyone knows each other. Linking up with universities and creating opportunities to bring in students, allows me to have a feel for potential candidates. Now I have a shortlist of people to invite for interview when the next position opens. With more general recruitment we do it in a formal way. With the help of HR, we determine what certifications are required. Then, if they have experience in other sports, they get an extra point. If they have experience abroad, they get extra points. If they come from certain universities, extra points. If they have a degreemore related to health, that links with S&C or sports science. The hard skills are a non-negotiable, they need to have these hard skills. But they also need to understand the language of football, or they cannot communicate with the technical staff. If you have the hard skills, independent of the sport, it will be easier to learn the sport, football, rugby, or cricket, for example. If I’m recruiting for the professional team, I’m not looking for a guy coming from rowing because he needs to have advanced skills in football. He needs to know what a football changing room is like. What a guy receiving two and a half million a year is like. How far can I go with a guy that costs so much for the club? What will be the risks versus the pros? I need a guy that’s able to make those decisions. I need a senior staff member. If I’m looking for under 14s or under 15s, I want more diversity. I want different backgrounds, exposing kids to different sports, that’s a criterion. Withinour staff,wecreateopportunities where they can share things, which provides education to the group. I try to challenge them on these aspects. Some of us have lots of experience at other clubs, other way to work. Some of these young kids will probably stay at Sporting for 10-15 years as staff and won’t see other realities. I am trying to challenge the board to agree to CPD with other clubs, to keep them open minded to other things, that it’s not just the Sporting model is perfect. We also bring people in from different sports, different realities, amateur to elite, to understand there is something other than sporting. Francisco Tavares SportingCP: Physical PerformanceCoordinator TOPIC 3