MILAN – It was back in the 1300s that the Portuguese were first gripped by wanderlust. From their outpost on the edge of Europe, they set out to explore the world, discovering peoples, cultures and ways of thinking that were completely different to their own.
Fast forward six hundred years, to the 1930s, and Antonio Salazar was busy building his Estado Novo. Authoritarian and isolationist, it was a very different Portugal to the inquisitive country that explored the world centuries earlier.
Yet the Carnation Revolution tore down all that in 1974, and a new Portugal was born.
In keeping with the traditions of the early explorers, there are now Portuguese football managers working all over the world, bringing with them an insatiable desire for modernisation, for new ways of thinking.
It was an approach that worked wonders at Inter for Jose Mourinho, the mastermind of the club’s historic treble. Mourinho brought new practices to Appiano Gentile, while his sides adopted a new style on the pitch and the coach kept everyone entertained with a new way of approaching his media duties. It was Mourinho against the world, but people duly stood up and took notice after he made history again and again.
Paulo Sousa – coach of Monday night’s opponents Fiorentina – also had a short spell at Inter, towards the end of his playing career. Though the Portuguese regularly produced impressive performances, time was beginning to take its toll and Sousa was already preparing for a career in management. It was perhaps inevitable that Sousa would make the step into coaching, having spent a career directing his team-mates from the centre of midfield.
Sousa’s brand of football is all about the collective, with short passes crucial to the way his teams play. The Portuguese threw himself into the challenge of management with the spirit of Henry the Navigator, the man responsible for championing and supporting the geographical exploration of the Kingdom of Portugal. Perhaps a young Paulo Sousa once looked up at the statue of Henry in the main square of Viseu – his hometown – and wondered of the frontiers he himself might explore.
As it happened, Sousa’s coaching career has seen him travel the length and breadth of Europe, from England to Hungary and Israel before the Portuguese got his break at Basel, in Switzerland. One league championship later and Fiorentina came calling.
In Florence, Sousa has caught the eye for his erudite manner with the press. His conferences are never dull, often profound and always centred around his great love: football. Sousa may come across as supremely laid back, but the strength of his conviction is unerring.
On the pitch, Sousa’s Fiorentina are a well-oiled tactical machine. The Viola look to make the pitch as wide as possible in order to free up room between the lines, thus creating space in behind the defenders. Sousa’s men use a variety of systems, switching between a back three and back four at will, inviting pressure in certain areas before springing into attack mode with the opposition at their most vulnerable.
Principi di gioco – playing philosophy – is probably the most commonly used phrase in Sousa’s Italian vocabulary. In his eyes, the philosophy is everything. His is a modern way of approaching and speaking about football, yet one that traces its roots back through the centuries. Back to those fearless explorers, taking on wind, storms, lack of recognition and daily adversity. Brave men, their minds free, open – just like Paulo Sousa’s football philosophy.
