On July 02nd, Flamengo's Basketball Manager, Diego Jeleilate, completed one year at the club. Upon arrival, the GM's mission was to integrate the youth and professional teams, optimize processes, and implement a unified path in the youth ranks that would lead the club to winning titles again. The initial results achieved with the senior team were impressive, with Flamengo reclaiming its place at the top of the national rankings after winning the NBB, the Super 8 tournament, and finishing second in the FIBA ​​Intercontinental Cup. In the youth ranks, Diego was responsible for restructuring the coaching staff and implementing a new work methodology aligned with the needs of head coach Gustavo De Conti. The journey is just beginning, according to the professional, who gave an exclusive interview to the Official Website. 

You've completed a year leading the red-and-black basketball team. During this time, especially at the youth level, the changes in several areas are clear. Please review these first few months at Mais Querido. 

In the first two to three months, we conducted a diagnostic to understand the reality of Flamengo's youth basketball team, understanding the real demand, the competitions, the level of competitiveness... I immediately realized that Flamengo has a strong dominance in state competitions, but that it had been struggling a bit in national competitions. So, the first major change was the immediate signing of three new athletes to make up the U-20 team that would play in the LDB, and then working with the coaches to align methodologically with what the head coach (Gustavo De Conti) wanted for the adult team.  

That was a bit of a lengthy process, as we needed to explain the methodology, what Gustavo wanted to see worked on, and what he didn't want to work on. We began a series of regular meetings, and the results resulted in victories in virtually every category in the state championship, as well as strong results in the Brazilian championship—we finished second in the U-18 championship and fourth in the U-4 championship, which was a significant achievement. 

From then on, we also wanted Flamengo's youth players to join adult teams, so we were able to send players from our squad to compete in other teams while maintaining our main focus: winning the national championship. It worked out well for João Vitor, for example, who was one of the standouts in the Liga Ouro, and for João Camargo, who went to Londrina. One of our performance goals at Flamengo is to place players on adult teams, so we were able to achieve this goal in this first year. 

We also identified that the level of play of the athletes who only played in the Rio state championships wasn't sufficient to compete in adult competitions, so we further strengthened the U-20 team in the first six months of 2019 for this upcoming season, bringing in more athletes and increasing the number of matches. We're already building a strong reputation in terms of youth development, so today, athletes from outside the country are already seeking out Flamengo to come and play for our youth team, which is something that's been happening recently, largely due to Gustavo's work, which uses young players in the adult team. 

So, I think this step-by-step process we're taking is part of a gradual evolution. We can't just arrive and say, "We've implemented a basic project." It's a process of construction. And this first year has been incredibly positive, in terms of the level of work we're putting into Flamengo.

During this process, as we checked what was working and what needed to be corrected, we made some changes along the way. We made a major internal reshuffle, in addition to changing the coaching categories, we replaced two coaches and the position of Paulo Chupeta, who had previously been the U-20 coach and became Technical Coordinator of the youth team. We also brought in a new coach for the U-19 and U-20 categories, Rodrigo Galego. For the U-13 and U-14 categories, we brought in a new coach, Vitor Boccardo, who also has a more educational approach, teaching fundamentals. We also brought in our intern, Fred, a former CRF athlete, who assists with individualized training.

 

As part of this restructuring, Flamengo aims to develop its star players at home, up to the age of 14. We don't want to bring in anyone from outside this age group. From U-15 onwards, we aim to compete at the national and international level, supplying as many athletes as possible to national and international teams, as is the Flamengo brand in football today.  

The Brazilian national team is one of Flamengo's key objectives. Both at the adult and youth levels, it's a very strong indicator because it's a huge responsibility to assume we'll have players on the team, even though we have no say in who will optimize this process. At the youth level, this is much more difficult than at the adult level, because at the adult level, you still know who the players are who are constantly playing for the national teams.

What's great is that we're already starting to see these results. Last year, Gabriel Landeira joined the U-14 team; this year, we had three athletes on the Brazilian 3x3 basketball team—which is an Olympic sport, though Flamengo doesn't have one yet—and now we have an athlete on the U-21 team, as well as assistant coach "Fernandinho," who is currently the assistant coach for the adult team. It's worth noting that he was a coach at Flamengo's youth academy, which is the result of the alignment of a process we're already using, not only for athletes in the adult team but also for members of the coaching staff.

These are two distinct projects. The Sports School is where people want to pursue a path of sports development, but not necessarily to become performance athletes. It's a path that, here at the club, extends all the way to adulthood. Today, we have over 130 students at EESF. The other path is the competitive teams, which this year already had U-12, 13, and 14 as the first three development teams. 

In these training teams, respecting all the long-term training processes that are provided in partnership with CUIDAR, we do not seek the final objective as performance, but rather athletes formed as people, as citizens, as future athletes and that we see in them future potential to compose the teams from the U-15 onwards. 

So this is the methodology we started to align. To achieve this, we hired a more experienced coach, Beegu, who was in the U-17s, and put him in the U-15s because we realized it was important to have this seriousness in this category transition. And from there, the funnel becomes even narrower. These are athletes we want to have an adult profile, who are dedicated to training seriously and developing all their capabilities, especially cognitive ones, and at this point the focus is on performance. So the pressure starts at the U-15s, a little more at the U-17s, and even greater at the U-19s and 20s.

The process of recruiting athletes today, which we call "Talent Selection," works in three ways: what we produce from the Sports Schools; those who stand out in our social centers, and then are sent by the coaches of these centers for testing; and the third are the tests (sieves) up to the U-15 level. 

From the U-15s onwards, we already work with the national mapping of athletes, where we already have the profile that interests Flamengo, both at the state and national level, and we go after it with a approach more professional, let's say. This way, we can select the most specific talents to make up the adult team, perhaps.

It's great to see youth athletes with the potential to make the senior team. Gustavo followed the LDB competitions, and he selected seven of the twelve athletes to make up the senior team. Today, Flamengo has nine adult athletes and seven youth athletes in a squad of 16 for the 2019/2020 season. The interesting thing is that the work is so integrated that we've been making adjustments to our planning. For example, for the U-18 team that will compete in the CBC now, three athletes from the adult team will play in the competition. We then lost these three athletes during training. When they return, we lose the four athletes who will play in the CBC U-20. This already demonstrates the strength these athletes have to make up the senior team. Right now, Pedro (Nunes) is already joining the U-21 team with Fernandinho. So Flamengo is starting to face a significant challenge: knowing where the athletes will be so we can plan effectively. 

Besides that, we have other athletes with potential, which we already see as such. It's worth noting that Flamengo currently has seven athletes with more than a year of contracts. These are athletes who are prospects to make up the main cast in the near future. And who knows, maybe next year, instead of nine adults, we'll go down to eight, seven? We don't know... We're going through this renewal process right here, and the results have been positive.

A long-term training project, as the name suggests, won't be implemented overnight, and we won't be able to incorporate all the characteristics we'd like. In other work opportunities, in other places, it took us five or six years to achieve excellence in the youth categories. As I mentioned before, we already have state-level dominance. We're the efficiency trophy winners in the state. What we want is to compete on equal terms in all Brazilian youth teams, and not only that, but also to be alongside these athletes playing on adult teams. 

Our project is ambitious. Who knows, perhaps in the near future we'll be able to have a team consisting almost entirely of these young players, a very strong, consolidated one... The expected result is naturally that these athletes will join the main teams and join other teams, since our goal isn't to train players solely for Flamengo, but also for basketball. We have no problem directing them to other teams, both national and international. So, the goal is to have the best basketball development work in the near future, following the same successful path as the main team. I emphasize that the excellent work and management of Flamengo's EEOO is what is making all this happen.