Rúben Amorim will become the seventh Portuguese to coach an English League club, a door opened 20 years ago by José Mourinho, who took no time in justifying his self-styled ‘special one’ status.
Inspired by winning the Champions League (with the additional merit of having done so at the helm of FC Porto, the only national club to lift the trophy in the ‘Champions’ era), José Mourinho produced the expression that stuck to his skin, in Presentation press conference as Chelsea coach, on a morning in June 2004.
Mourinho became English champion three times, in 2005, 2006 and 2015, in two spells at Chelsea, which was already swimming in the pounds that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich dumped on Stamford Bridge, but continued to boast a solitary title of English champion on his list. , achieved 50 years earlier.
The Setúbal-born coach reached the top of English football with the ‘Blues’, which he led between 2004 and 2007, and between 2013 and 2015, and believed he could do the same at Manchester United, but was unable to recreate the glory of London in a club haunted since 2013 by the ‘ghost’ of Scottish Alex Ferguson.
José Mourinho coached the Red Devils between 2016 and 2018 and, despite winning a Europa League, he was unable to return the long-awaited national title to United, at a time when rival Manchester City was rising. His time at Tottenham, between 2019 and 2021, was not very memorable.
Mourinho’s success on His Majesty’s land paved the way for other Portuguese coaches, such as André Villas-Boas, Marco Silva, Carlos Carvalhal, Nuno Espírito Santo, Bruno Lage and, now, Rúben Amorim, Manchester United’s new manager, who will try to succeed where José Mourinho failed.
André Villas-Boas was the first to literally follow in his footsteps. In 2011, he headed to Chelsea, still boasting the laurels of a European victory at FC Porto, although more modest, the Europa League, which Mourinho had also won at the Porto club, eight years earlier, then still under the name of the UEFA Cup. .
The stay of the current president of the Dragons in the English capital was substantially shorter and less fruitful: André Villas-Boas remained as coach of the Blues for less than a year, between 2011 and 2012 (leaving before Chelsea became European champions, with the Italian Roberto Di Matteo) and little more than that at Tottenham, until 2013.
2017 saw the arrival of two Portuguese coaches in the Premier League. Marco Silva was the first, in January, to manage Hull City, and Carlos Carvalhal arrived at Swansea in December (where he stayed for just five months), after his compatriot left the Tigers for Watford.
Marco Silva spent around half a year with the second most famous Hornets (after the North American Basketball League team), before spending time at Everton, between 2018 and 2019, and Fulham, which started in 2021 and where he continues of stone and lime.
With four English teams under his belt, Marco Silva is the Portuguese coach who knows the most benches in England, alongside Mourinho, and one of the three active in the most important European championship, along with Nuno Espírito Santo and, now, Rúben Amorim .
Current coach of Nottingham Forest, for which he was hired at the end of last year, Nuno Espírito Santo entered British football in 2017 with less fanfare, in a Wolverhampton team competing in the Championship, the second English tier, which the Portuguese promoted to the main level right away. debut season.
Nuno Espírito Santo only left the Wolves in 2021 and was replaced by Bruno Lage, but the change was not favorable to either of them: the first lasted just four months at Tottenham, a disastrous club for national coaches, and the second, currently at Benfica, spent just over a season in the chair occupied by his compatriot for four years.
