One of the biggest Polish football news website Eurosport.onet.pl speaks today about big popularity of Portuguese football coaches abroad who thanks to that became a synonym of their country in the world. According to Portuguese Association of Football Coaches (ANTF) in the end of 2014 nearly 180 Portuguese coaches were working abroad, the biggest number of 64 - in European clubs and 51 - in Asian. In opinion of Portuguese phenomenon of their coaches was initiated by English coach Bobby Robson who was working in Sporting Lisbon and FC Porto between 1992 and 1996 and who discovered Jose Mourinho and Andre Villas-Boas by inviting them to cooperation. According to Visao, weekly newspaper from Lisbon, breakthrough moment that opened the way for Portuguese coaches abroad was winning Champions League by Jose Mourinho with FC Porto in 2004. Nowadays more and more European reputable clubs are being managed by coaches from Portugal what is proofed by current edition of Champions League. In the group stage 6 Portuguese coaches was participating in the competition with their teams, Mourinho with Chelsea, Jorge Jesus with Benfica from Lisbon, Paulo Sousa with FC Basel, Leonardo Jardim with AS Monaco, Villas-Boas with Zenit Sankt Petersburg and Marco Silva with Sporting Lisbon. Three of them, i.e. Mourinho, Sousa and Jardim led their teams to Champions League 1/8 final 2014/2015. Although Portuguese coaches are leading in European clubs, they are also popular in less known championships in very often distant and exotic countries such as Maldives, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam or Costa Rica. Even African football federations are willing nowadays to hire Portuguese coaches to their national teams. For instant former football stars of FC Porto Rui Aguas and Jorge Costa are managers of African national teams, the first one of Cabo Verde and the second one of Gabon, also national team of Etopia has a Portuguese coach, i.e. Mariano Barreto. Finally Polish Eurosport.onet.pl speaks also about hiring Portuguese coaches by Polish clubs, from June to September 2014 Jorge Paixao was managing Zawisza Bydgoszcz (won Supercup of Poland) and Joaquim Machado Lechia Gdansk. Source: Eurosport.onet.pl
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:08:09 +0000