Only the Portuguese league has more Portuguese coaches than Brazilian football. If there was only one (Jorge Jesus) in the summer of 2019, the 2023 season, which starts in a few days with the State Championships, will have seven Portuguese coaches among the Brazilian elite and with Abel Ferreira in charge and in defense of the Brasileirão title (starting in April). The also returning Vítor Pereira (Flamengo), Luís Castro (Botafogo) and António Oliveira (Coritiba) will be joined this year by Pedro Caixinha (Red Bull Brigantino), Renato Paiva (Bahia) and Ivo Vieira (Cuiabá).
The number is even more relevant when you consider that before Jorge Jesus opened the way to Brazil for good for the Portuguese, with the resounding success in Flamengo (Brasileirão and Taça Libertadores in one year), only six Portuguese had trained in Vera Cruz and not all of them among the elite: Paulo Bento, Sérgio Vieira, Paulo Morgado, Luís Miguel Gouveia, Jorge Joreca and Ernesto Santos.
But if Jesus opened the door for the arrival of such names as Augusto Inácio, Sá Pinto, Paulo Sousa and even Abel Ferreira, it was the “Portuga de Penafiel” that kept him wide open for the arrival of half a dozen more compatriots at the surpass the conquests of Jorge Jesus and make history in Palmeiras with five trophies in three years.
The new season starts with this certainty: the first trophy will be won by a Portuguese. On January 22, Palmeiras de Abel will play the Brazilian Super Cup with Flamengo, now owned by Vítor Pereira, who is also the closest rival in the battle for the Brasileirão, which will not start until April 15 – in one of the most contested editions in history , with 15 of the 17 champions among the 20 participants.
And with this historical data: the first champion of Brazil, Bahia, is coached by Renato Paiva (born in Pedrógão Pequeno, Castelo Branco), one of three rookies, who will make his debut on January 11 against Juazeirense, in the tournament state . Watching videos of the full Fontenova made him “excited” to experience the “lively passion of the fans” at the stadium.
The tricolor technician explained to DN that “he couldn’t ignore the invitation of a history”. The giant from Bahia has been sleeping, but he moved up in the division and became “challenging” for the Portuguese: “I’m a project coach and that’s why I immediately accepted it. With the professionalism and stability of the City Group behind me… I couldn’t ask for more and play with that addition in the Brasileirão. For me it’s a pride to be in year zero and I hope to be the technical catalyst for this project.”
“Adapted” to the ideas of the City Group – belongs to United Arab Emirates’ Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, owner of Manchester City – , which promised to invest 182 million euros in Bahia over the next 15 years, the Portuguese coach signed until 2025 to grow the club and take it to the next level. And without the mainstay of nationality and this practice of classifying coaches according to their specific influence in a country. Renato believes that the City Group already had their eye on him for the work he did for 16 years in Benfica’s formation and not because he was Portuguese: “When you see someone succeed, you want to get more out of the same formula. The extraordinary work of Jorge Jesus and Abel has that merit. They left their mark and showed those responsible that we, the Portuguese, deserved another look. But That I don’t see it from the flag, although there is no denying that the Portuguese coach has an incredible global impact.”
Let him say it. He was champion with Independiente del Valle (Ecuador) and became the 36th Portuguese coach to become champion abroad, “a sign of how Portugal sends coaches to the world”.
Renato Paiva may even think that nationality is not enough to get hired, but in Brazil, being Portuguese is already an important requirement and has sparked a revolution opportunities bookmakers, who move millions of euros. In a Globoesporte report, Betano justified the opportunities lower in matches played by Portuguese coaches, with the “defensive organization”, which is the characteristic of Portuguese coaches, explaining that the probability of a team winning is lower when facing another team coached by a Portuguese.
Portuguese training methodology has differentiated. And that’s not a coincidence. The coach training model has been praised and even copied by UEFA, with Portugal being the fourth European country to train the most and the sixth country to export the most, according to the Football Observatory. To be an elite coach (UEFA A), you need eight years, about eight thousand euros in licenses and four internships that enable you to act tactically, physically, technically and psychologically.
From Abel to Ivo. Who is who…
Abel Ferreira (born in Penafiel) will defend the title. The coach arrived in Palmeiras in 2020 and won the first trophy in Verdão with only three months of work (Taça do Brasil) and never stopped. In 2022, he took part in the Brasileirão (11th title in the history of the São Paulo club) for the two Libertadores Cups.
In 2023, he will have the difficult task of surpassing himself in a team that is his face and he has the boy Endrick (sold to Real Madrid, will stay in Verdão until 2024), which he launched at the age of 16. And he will have to deal with the wounded pride that he has not (yet) been invited to coach Brazil, as many would expect and even bet that he would.
Abel can start the year and season with a new trophy. His debut in the São Paulo championship is scheduled for January 14, against São Bento, and on January 22, he will play in the Brazilian Super Cup… with Vítor Pereira’s Flamengo.
After coaching Corinthians (he finished 4th in the championship), the coach, born in Espinho, asked to leave Timão due to a family problem, but he was placed on Fla’s route. His resume speaks for itself – two-time champion at FC Porto, he celebrated the title in Olympiacos (Greece) and Shanghai SIPG (China), via Al Ahil Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) or Fenerbahçe (Turkey) – but he will not be an easy life. At Mengão, he will face the high demands of the biggest fans in the world, demanding his 9th title in history, as well as the wrath of the Corinthians fans.
Vítor Pereira’s debut will be on the 12th, with Audax-RJ, for the Guanabara Cup. The same opponent tests Luís Castro in the first game of the season, on the 15th, but counts for the Carioca Championship. The coach of Mondrões (Vila Real) reached the end of last season’s championship in the middle of the table (11th), but the turbulence in Botafogo threatened his continuity in the position. The backlog in wages, the lack of reinforcements and the almost lack of planning for the new season led him to consider after the conquests of 1968 and 1995 to Glorioso do Brasil, which has been trying for years to win the 3rd title. leave. making a more stable championship, knowing that this will be almost impossible given the sheer variety of results out there. Doing better would be to participate in the Libertadores Cup. That would be fantastic,” said Luís Castro yesterday. “I do not distinguish between Brazilian, Portuguese, English and Japanese coaches… A coach is a coach. It is true that Portuguese coaches are attractive today. The good results have been successful, the methodology applied is interesting and is widely used appreciated. world”, said the Botafogo coach without any problems designating Palmeiras (v. Abel) and Flamengo (v. Vítor Pereira) as candidates for the title.
António Oliveira (born in Lisbon) has represented four Brazilian emblems in the past three years. He started coaching the Under-23s at Santos in 2020, and was later promoted to assistant to Jesualdo Ferreira, who would eventually leave, and also led the career-less young coach in Portugal to move to Athletico’s Under-23s Paranaense. The good work led to a supersonic promotion to the first team where I will stay until the end of the 2021 season. And already in 2022, after an unsuccessful experience in the formation of Benfica, he returned to Brazil to help Cuiabá to get into the Brazil. He now gets another chance at Coritiba, the first club from Paraná to win the title (1985) and where he will make his debut on January 14 against Rio Branco-PR for the Campeonato Paranaense.
Also seduced for the first time by Terras de Vera Cruz, Ivo Vieira (born in Machico, Madeira) will accompany Cuiabá… who was managed last year by António Oliveira and remained in the elite. The club from the Mato Grosso region bet on the former coach of Gil Vicente and Moreirense, with his debut scheduled for the 21st, against Mixto.
Ivo Vieira will gain his first experience in South America, a continent where Pedro Caixinha (born in Beja) is doing well, especially in Mexico, where he spent most of his career and where he won several trophies. José Peseiro’s former assistant at Sporting was the last of the Portuguese to be announced – the 17th in history – and will be the commander of the Red Bull Brigantino project – one of the seven clubs of the Red Bull monopoly. It will be the first experience in Brazil and will have a fiery debut: with Corinthians, on the 15th, for Paulistão.
Source: DN
