Which Portuguese manager will go furthest in the UEFA Europa League?
While no Portuguese clubs remain in the Europa League, four of the sixteen sides left in the competition have a Portuguese manager at the helm.
No nation has more managers remaining in Europe’s secondary competition than Portugal, with Norway, Austria and Spain each boasting two each, while there’s then one manager from each of England, Turkey, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland and France.
Portugal having 25% of the remaining managers is therefore an impressive feat, with Paulo Fonseca’s Roma, Nuno Espirito Santo’s Wolves, Pedro Mendes’ Olympiakos and Luis Castro’s Shakhtar Donetsk all still in the competition.
But which of the four managers is likely to go furthest? Here we take a look at who each of their sides will play in the next round, and try and give a verdict on who could go the furthest in the tournament.
Paulo Fonseca - AS Roma (vs Sevilla)
Fonseca’s had a solid but unspectacular time at Roma since taking over the club at the start of the season, making the move to Italy from Shakhtar Donetsk. His side currently sit 5th in Serie A, 3 points off the Champions League places having played a game more than Atalanta in 4th.
They have very much cemented 5th place, though, with their nearest challengers, Napoli, 6 points behind them with a significantly poorer goal difference.
It does represent improvement; last season, Roma only managed a 6th place finish, though they are on track to finish a couple of points worse off than last campaign, when they picked up a total of 66 points, suggesting that they are benefitting from a much more open season than normal in the Italian game.
Nevertheless, Roma have played some entertaining football this season, and have proven that they can create goalscoring opportunites aplenty, which is what we saw from Shakhtar under the guidance of Fonseca. It’s defensively that they’ve perhaps struggled more than anything, which again is unsurprising to those who saw Fonseca’s Shakhtar in the Champions League.
They’ve shown their goalscoring prowess in the Europa League too, thumping Istanbul Basaksehir -the side that knocked Sporting out of the competition - 4-0 and 3-0 home and away respectively. Yet they still, somehow, found a way to end up finishing below the Turkish side. And that’s due to the fact that they failed to win any of their other Europa League group stage matches, drawing 3, and losing one.
It was a tricky group, of course. They earned two draws against Austrian side Wolfsberg, who ended up finishing bottom of the group, and then drew at home to Monchengladbach before losing away. So they scraped through the group with just 9 points from 6 games, with a highly impressive +6 goal difference. Every other side in the group, meanwhile, had a negative goal difference, which just about sums up how chaotic and unpredictable the group ended up being. You have to love the Europa League.
In the following round, they were also unconvincing, just about getting past Gent 2-1 on aggregate to advance to the round of 16. It was somewhat uncharacteristic from Fonseca’s side, with a 1-0 home win followed up with a 1-1 draw in Belgium, and it wasn’t particularly pretty. It was effective and controlled, though - and perhaps that sort of professional display is better than any kind of gung-ho attitude, even if it’s not as exciting.
There have been a few critics of Fonseca since he took over, it should be said, with more than a few disgruntled fans, but most logical supporters understand that Rome, quite literally, wasn’t built in a day. Any manager needs time, and this has been a pretty solid start to his managerial career in Italy.
In any case, Sevilla are sure to cause significant problems for Roma, a very strong side in their own right, who currently sit 5th in La Liga, conveniently the same spot Roma sit in Serie A. It’s finely poised, set up perfectly, and incredibly tough to call.
If this comes to Lopetegui vs Fonseca, though, you’d have to fancy Fonseca to have the better managerial know-how to see this one out. Former Porto manager Lopetegui still has a lot to prove in the eyes of Portuguese football fans.
Verdict: Roma to make it through, just.
Nuno Espirito Santo (Wolves vs Olympiakos)
Not much needs to be said about the job Nuno’s doing at Wolves; his work has been well documented, and he has been earning admirers all across the globe for what he has achieved at the club since he took over in the summer of 2017.
History has taught us that clubs from England outside the big six who qualify for the Europa League tend to struggle to juggle fighting on two fronts. The fact that Wolves are sitting 8th in the Premier League, just 6 points off 4th, whilst having navigated through the Europa League qualifying stages and group stage to reach the round of 16 in convincing fashion is an incredible achievement, particularly for a club who were only promoted to the English top flight two years ago.
Portuguese football fans don’t need telling about the quality in Wolves’ ranks, either. There’s a lot of players in there who have plied their trade in the Primeira Liga in the past - and for the Portugal national team too. The spine of the team is quite extraordinary in its talent, testament to those who run the recruitment at the club. You could argue that every player they’ve brought in from Portugal since Nuno came in - bar Roderick Miranda, of course - has been a major success.
One thing Nuno’s side have struggled with in the league this season is converting draws into wins; they are incredibly difficult to beat, but had they just managed to convert a couple of those draws into victories, they would undoubtedly be one of the frontrunners for a Champions League place - which is quite extraordinary to think.
Their record of twelve draws in 27 matches is only surpassed by Arsenal - who are in a very similar position to Wolves, their lack of wins really costing them in their fight for top four.
Their Europa League campaign has been something of a different story, though, where winning certainly hasn’t been an issue. They won all six of their Europa League qualifying matches - twice against Italian outfit Torino - and then won four of their 6 group stage matches. Interestingly, both matches they failed to win came against Braga, who beat Wolves 0-1 at Molineux, and drew 3-3 in the Minho in a tremendous encounter. They were two results which Braga, led by Sa Pinto at the time, were unsurprisingly particularly content about.
Wolves ended up coming 2nd in the group. They, however, got the last laugh, earning a convincing 6-3 victory over Espanyol over two legs, while Braga stuttered out of the competition against Rangers before the other Portuguese clubs followed suit.
Wolves therefore have not just a large portion of the entire city of Wolverhampton behind them, but an entire nation too, as Portugal look to Wolves to do the business where the Portuguese clubs failed.
They now face Olympiakos, though, in what will undoubtedly be an intriguing battle, again particularly for fans of Portuguese football.
Pedro Martins - Olympiakos (vs Wolves)
That’s because their opponents are none other than Pedro Martins’ Olympiakos. It sets up a clash of Portuguese managers, between two clubs who have recently had track records of forming something of Portuguese contingents.
Olympiakos’ certainly isn’t close to being on the same level as Wolves’ - particularly after Wolves snapped up the Greek side’s star winger Daniel Podence - but they are still a club that have been of considerable interest to fans of Portuguese football.
They’re currently doing a very good job, one of an increasingly small number of sides to still be unbeaten in their domestic league, sitting top of the Greek Superleague with 19 wins and 6 draws, 5 points clear of PAOK.
They did well in their Champions League campaign too, giving Tottenham Hotspur a scare both home and away, picking up a 2-2 draw in Greece before throwing away a two-goal lead to lose 4-2 in London. They did similarly well versus Bayern Munich, taking the lead before losing 2-3.
For all their effort in the Champions League, though, they only finished on 4 points, scraping into the Europa League above Red Star Belgrade.
It meant they were unseeded for the Europa League round of 32 draw - and were handed a tricky tie versus last year’s finalists, Arsenal. After a 0-1 loss in Greece, it seemed a formality that the Londoners would proceed, yet an incredible match at The Emirates, with twists and turns and last-gasp efforts saw Olympiakos edge through in dramatic style after extra time.
That has set up this exciting clash between Olympiakos and Wolves, and it’s the type of high-calibre match you expect from the latter stages of the Europa League.
Which way is it going to go? It’s not the easiest one to predict - particularly considering the resilience and never-say-die attitude Olympiakos have shown when they are up against the odds. Overall, you have to consider Wolves favourites, but Olympiakos at home are usually very strong - and as they showed against Arsenal, not too bad away either.
Verdict: Wolves’ European adventure will continue, though it will be a much closer battle than that with Espanyol.
Luis Castro - Shakhtar Donetsk (vs Wolfsburg)
Shakhtar Donetsk, alongside Olympiakos, are another of those few sides previously mentioned that remain unbeaten domestically, currently way in front in the Ukrainian Premier League with 17 wins and 2 draws in 19 outings (NOTE: Since this article was written, Shakhtar have lost a league).
As always, they are dominating their own field with ease, cruising to yet another Ukrainian title with little to no trouble once again, Luis Castro simply picking up from where Paulo Fonseca left off.
It must be difficult to follow in the footsteps of Paulo Fonseca, and it would be a tall order to do any better than that which Fonseca managed to do at the helm considering he took over a Shakhtar side who hadn’t won the title in two seasons before then leading them to three on the trot, losing just 8 league games across those three seasons in charge. Yet Luis Castro may well be on his way to matching, and eventually potentially surpassing, the impressive achievements of his compatriot.
After all, one thing Fonseca never managed to do was oversee an unbeaten season - albeit he did come close last season, when they lost just the single game away to Dynamo Kiev - whilst Castro is now over halfway towards that excellent accomplishment, having already beaten Kiev both home and away.
They may also be conceding more goals than Fonseca’s side ever did, but they are also scoring more too, and that makes them a highly exciting side to watch.
It’s not been all their own way, of course. While they are flying high in the Premier League, they went out of the Ukrainian Cup in the round of 16, losing to their nearest rivals Dynamo Kiev after extra time. In that sense, they are already unable to match the accomplishments of last season, when they did the domestic double.
They have, however, by reaching the Europa League round of 16, already surpassed their European campaign from last season, where they went out in the round of 32 versus Eintracht Frankfurt.
That said, their Champions League campaign was a bit of a let down, where they finished with just one win in their 6 games, giving up a place in the Champions League knockout phase in their last match of the group stage; they simply needed a draw versus Atalanta to confirm 2nd place, but went on to lose 3-0.
That saw them drop into the Europa League, where the overcame Benfica across two legs, and looked good going forwards, even if vulnerable at the back. They have a mistake or two in them too.
Now, they face Bundesliga side Wolfsburg, who are something of an unpredictable team. They’re currently 7th in Germany, and have advanced to this stage of the Europa League by thumping Malmo in the round of 32 having emerged from a group containing Gent, Saint Etienne, and Oleksandriya.
They are a team capable of pulling out some good results against strong opposition, but they are a team Shakhtar would fancy their chances against.
Verdict: Shakhtar to come out on top over the two legs.
Which club will go the furthest?
That, of course, is more difficult to answer, with it in part depending on ‘luck of the draw’. Assuming Olympiakos do indeed go out versus Wolves and both Roma and Shakhtar advance, that will set up a fascinating quarter final, with all three of those sides within touching distance of the biggest prize.
And all three of them can have realistic aspirations of going all the way, particularly with a fortunate draw. The side that are perhaps best positioned to go all the way, though, are Roma, being a side with tremendous European pedigree.
Paulo Fonseca. Photo author: ФК «Волынь» Луцк. License link.
