One, two, three, four, five! Portuguese coaches triumph all over Europe

One, two, three, four, five! Portuguese coaches triumph all over Europe

Over the last couple of decades Portuguese football has earned much acclaim for producing and exporting some of the world’s top players to Europe’s biggest clubs.

Nowadays it’s the country’s coaches who are in demand and are blazing a trail all across the continent – and beyond.

No fewer than 5 Portuguese coaches have guided their teams to the respective national championships in Europe this season: Vítor Pereira (Olympiakos), José Mourinho (Chelsea), André Villas-Boas (Zenit St. Petersburg), Paulo Sousa (FC Basel) and Jorge Jesus (Benfica). 

 

Serial winners

None of the quintet are novices when it comes to finishing top of the pile after a long hard season. The masterful Mourinho has now accumulated an incredible 8 league titles (2 in Portugal, 2 in Italy, 1 in Spain and 3 in England), Pereira has three to his name (2 in Portugal, 1 in Greece), as has Jorge Jesus who has three times led Benfica to the Primeira Liga, while AVB (Portugal and Russia) and Paulo Sousa (Israel and Switzerland) have each won two national championship titles.

Further afield Jesualdo Ferreira - the only Portuguese coach to guide a Portuguese team to three successive titles, at FC Porto - is well placed to wrap up the Egyptian championship at the helm of Zamalek. 

Almost as impressive has been the job done by Nuno Espírito Santo at Valencia, and Leonardo Jardim at Monaco, whose teams are currently in Champions League qualification positions in Spain and France respectively.

And talking about the Champions League, in this year’s competition Portugal had more managers representing their homeland than any other European country – six in total.

It was not always the way. As recently as 20 years ago the stock of Portuguese coaches was anything but high. Never mind abroad, at that time Primeira Liga clubs, big and small alike, constantly hired foreign managers, some with questionable credentials, rather than entrusting the fortunes of their teams to local tacticians. 

 

Paradigm shift

When the option was taken to recruit a Portuguese coach, it appeared a colossal moustache and an impressive career as a player were the only two boxes that had to be ticked, with little thought given to the candidate’s tactical, technical or man-management skills.

Then Carlos Queiroz, José Mourinho and André Villas-Boas happened. Their spectacular success changed the mentalities of club presidents up and down the country. Queiroz’s work in nurturing Portugal’s golden generation triggered a sea-change in perceptions and the glittering achievements of Mourinho and AVB at Porto confirmed the paradigm shift.

A university trained, studious and well-educated coach was now the flavour of the month, and his past achievements (or lack thereof) as a player were deemed of no bearing at all in relation to how successful a manager he would become.

The way the likes of Carlos Azenha and José Gomes, to name but two, crashed and burned tempered the new fad, and halted the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater and forsake years of accumulated knowledge. The outcome is a happy mix of wizened former players and “new-school” academically educated coaches, which seems to have resulted in a perfect blend of new and old knowledge, harmoniously put at the service of the team.

Several of Portugal’s universities have run degrees in the sports-performance and coaching fields for many years now, and the Portuguese Football Federation has invested heavily in setting up courses and organising workshops and seminars to hone the talents of up-and-coming treinadores.

“Portugal has the best coaches in the world. They know exactly how to strategically set up their teams,” Jorge Jesus said earlier this month. Seleção coach Fernando Santos was last week asked to comment on Mourinho’s latest triumph. “He’s won so many titles, it’s no surprise when he adds another. Portuguese coaches are in vogue at the moment,” he said.

The evidence of this season suggests both men are right. Allied to an innate ability of Portuguese emigrants to quickly settle into a new environment, and one begins to see that the success of the country’s coaches abroad has not happened by chance. 

 

New crop emerging

And the jobs done by bright young coaches Marco Silva (Sporting), Sérgio Conceição (Braga), Rui Vitória (Vitória Guimarães) and Paulo Fonseca (Paços de Ferreira) suggest the supply line of Portuguese managers taking Europe by storm is not about the end any time soon. 

by Tom Kundert