Paulo Sousa is playing Risk — Sportellate.it

The globetrotting career of the new Salernitana coach.

Raise your hand who would have ever imagined a few years ago – but also a few months ago – that Paulo Sousa he would end up coaching the Salernitana. But also that he would pass consecutively through China, France, Poland, Brazil and then back to Italy after being the coach of Fiorentina. The Portuguese coach embarked on a career path that could be defined at least curious after finishing in a respectable fifth and a respectable eighth place on the Viola bench. But even before arriving in Italy for the first time, he had included in his curriculum a discreet list of countries visited, namely Portugal, England, Hungary, Israel and Switzerland.

Paulo Sousa’s career appears to be part of a huge match a Risk, where the Salernitana coach is carefully looking at all of his Territory cards and placing his tanks all over the map. As in every game of Risk, we don’t know what Paulo Sousa’s goal is, who maybe will then move on to Africa, or who maybe really has to conquer the whole of Europe. In the meantime, let’s enjoy this frenetic positioning of tanks around the map, retracing his coaching career card by card.

Great Britain

The first card that Paulo Sousa draws as manager of a first team is that of Great Britain. Indeed, in 2009, the Portuguese coach is chosen by Flavio Briatore in person to train the QPR, who competed in the Championship that year. Sousa is in his first real coaching experience and ends up in perhaps one of the worst places for coaches in the late 00s. He lasts from November to April, replacing and being replaced by player-manager Gareth Ainsworth – whose image I recommend going to see on Wikipedia. Furthermore, the reason for the dismissal is the fact that he “divulged confidential and sensitive information” about the club. It doesn’t happen every day, he must say.

With his hair still as long as it was when he was a player, Paulo Sousa then moves to Waleshired by Swansea City. The championship is still the Championship and this time Paulo manages to complete a full season, taking Swansea to seventh place, best result in several years. At the end of the season, however, he decides to change the air, moving on to ambitious Leicester. However, the history between Paulo Sousa and the English club lasted only nine games, in which the team never assimilated Sousa’s way of playing and won on a single occasion. Thus ends the British adventure of the former Juventus player.

Western Europe

But let’s take a step back: where was the Paulo Sousa coach born? Obviously in Portugal, his native country. Three years after his farewell to football, worn out with the shirt ofEspanyol, Sousa has his first chance on a bench. In fact, he receives the call of the Portuguese federationwho chose him to coach the under 16 national team. The experience at the helm of the youth team lasted three years, which ended with even a brief appearance as collaborator of Carlos Queiroz on the bench of the senior national team. It is from there that Paulo Sousa’s career as head coach will begin, and after a few months he will join QPR.

In Western Europe, however, Sousa also returned ten years after the first time, this time landing in France. Hired by a Bordeaux now a pale copy of what it used to be, he takes the French – without shining – to fourteenth place in Ligue 1 2018-19 as a substitute. The following season starts much better for Sousa, who fields an interesting team, which seems able to aim for the top positions, even with a practically zero transfer market. However, performance gradually normalizes and the team remains frozen in the twelfth place it occupied before the suspension due to the pandemic. In June, Sousa leaves by mutual agreement with the club.

Middle East and Northern Europe

Those in the title of this paragraph seem to be two territories that have nothing to do with each other, but they are both places of first times for Paulo Sousa. It is, in fact, in Israel that the first national title of his career arrives and he is on the bench Poland leading a senior national team for the first time.

Al Maccabi Tel Aviv Paulo Sousa arrives in 2013. It is his first experience outside Europe, even though his team formally competes in UEFA competitions. And it is precisely from UEFA competitions that great satisfactions come for Sousa, as well as from the championship won. In fact, the Portuguese coach manages to get Maccabi to a historic sixteenth-final of the Europa League. Once the season is over, however, the bond between the Israeli club and Paulo Sousa also ends, who decides to take other paths.

On the Poland bench, however, Paulo Sousa arrives in January 2021, a few months after the end of his experience at Bordeaux. This is how he leads the Polish national team to the European Championships of that summer, strongly disappointing with the last place in the group, and qualifies – with a decidedly more satisfactory roadmap – Poland to the play-offs for Qatar 2022. Play-offs in which he never sits on the bench, given that, in December 2021, he had engaged in a brutal tug of war with the Polish Federation to be left free to marry Flamengo. earning the hatred of all of Poland.

Brazil and China

Al Flamengo in the end Paulo Sousa manages to go there, making it one of the two most casual destinations of his already very casual career. After making false papers to land at the Brazilian club, Sousa found himself sacked in mid-season due to the less than brilliant performance of his team, which had picked up just three victories in the first ten games of the national championship. His successor, dorivalwill end up win both the Copa Libertadores and the Copa do Brasil in the same season.

The second most absurd destination of Paulo Sousa’s career is instead the Chinese. But even more absurd is the moment in his career in which he arrives, or after the excellent period at Fiorentina. In 2017, in fact, the Portuguese coach sits on the bench against all odds Tianjin Quanjian. Or rather, there could also be some predictions, given that at that time the Chinese league was booming, especially from the point of view of the salaries offered. In any case, Sousa’s Chinese adventure is very reminiscent of the Brazilian one, given his exemption this season, which came after a major crisis in results.

Southern Europe

After the British period mentioned above, Sousa’s career had however taken the first curious turn. In fact, in 2011 he was chosen as the new coach of On video. Despite having won the championship the previous season, the president of the Székesfehérvár team decides to sign a new coach with the aim of passing the Champions League preliminaries. As you may have already guessed from this premise, Videoton goes out in the first available round against Sturm Graz. In any case, Sousa remains on the Hungarian bench for a season and a half – before resigning for personal reasons – winning a second place, two Super Cups Hungary and a League Cup.

Paulo Sousa’s time in Hungary was followed by a winning season with the Maccabi Tel Avivand the Israeli vintage is followed by a rapprochement at home, as Sousa accords with the Basel at the start of the 2014/15 season. Even in Switzerland Sousa stops for just one season, winning the championship at the first try in that case as well. The excellent performances of the Swiss team attract the eyes of various European and above all Italian teams to Paulo Sousa and – after the mutual agreement with Basel – the Portuguese coach decides to marry at the Fiorentina. Another round, another run.

Fiorentina is the team with which Paulo Sousa makes himself known to the general public. The adventure in Tuscany couldn’t start better: six victories in the first seven and Fiorentina leading the championship after years. Despite a decline in the second part of the season, Sousa’s season is very positive and his management values ​​several players, such as Bernardeschi, Badelj, Kalinic and many others. The Portuguese therefore remains for a second season, which he manages to conclude for the first time. However, 2016/17 ended only with an eighth place, which leaves Viola out of cup competitions. Thus, in June, Sousa and Fiorentina took different paths, and the coach left Italy, without knowing that he would then return.

More than five years after the end of the adventure with Viola, Sousa was in fact appointed new coach of Salernitana. Perhaps more was expected from his career, especially after periods with Basel and Fiorentina, but now the Portuguese must concentrate on the present: saving Salernitana. And then who knows, add more tanks on his territory or make the next move, without anyone being able to predict what it will be.