It has now been six years since Portugal coach Fernando Santos took up the prestigious position as world football's killjoy-in-chief. Having first unleashed his über-functional football on the world in a four-year spell in charge of the Greek national team, the 61-year-old Lisbon native has become something of an international antagonist, delivering results by the most brutal means possible.
Portugal’s Fernando Santos is the perfect international coach
Fernando Santos prioritises functionality over all else, and Portugal are reaping the rewards.
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He now stands only 90 minutes away from Portugal's first ever major tournament win, a mere 90 minutes away from immortality. It's no longer possible to pretend — as much as our blind footballing idealism urges us otherwise — that Santos is a charlatan of global proportions, swindling his way to major tournament success on the back of blind luck. Like an exotic Tony Pulis, there can be no denying Santos' knack of getting the job done. Indeed, we may well go further: it's plausible that Santos is actually the perfect international coach.
First, some brief background. Having spent the majority of his journeyman managerial career criss-crossing between his home nation and his adopted one, he was offered his first job in international coaching by the Greek FA in 2010. Fans had reason to be skeptical: despite being awarded the Greece Superleague Manager of the Decade prize in 2010, he’d only ever won one title in a career that stretched all the way back to 1988. Four years of painfully defensive football ensued, though results were considerably better than the entertainment levels, and Santos led them to the knockout stages of both Euro 2012 and the 2014 World Cup, the latter for the first time in the nation’s history.
It was possible to offer a generous interpretation for the abject misery of watching the Greek national team under Santos. Ever since winning Euro 2004 under the equally pragmatic Otto Rehhagel, defensive football had become Greece’s modus operandi. Not only was it ingrained in their footballing culture, but it made sense: They lacked the talent to play a more expansive game, and instead had to make do with Georgios Samaras. Indeed it wasn’t pretty, but what was the alternative? The state of Greek football since — beaten home and away by the Faroe Islands en route to a dismal failure to qualify for Euro 2016 — suggests there wasn’t one. In retrospect, Santos’ work has only looked all the more impressive.
But even so, Santos’ appointment by the Portuguese FA after they were eliminated from the group stages of the World Cup in Brazil remained a peculiar one. After all, he is very much of the old school; what you see is exactly what you get. In an era of the Guardiolaesque modern manager, Santos stands as a relic. For him, no trendy touchline attire; just a furrowed brow and a conservative tie, and fuzzy grey hair sitting short and square atop his head like an organic ushanka. Occasionally, he can even be found smoking a cigarette on the touchline. The question being asked in 2014 was a reasonable one: Could this man — who resembles less a modern football coach than a veteran military commander — really lead an underperforming Portugal team to international success?
Two years further on, and we have our answer: an emphatic yes, regardless of what happens at the Stade de France in Sunday’s Euro 2016 final. Portugal have managed to exceed all expectations of an early knockout stage exit, and there can be no doubt that they’ve done it in utterly Santosian fashion. Their deep run has been founded on defensive solidity rather than attacking prowess; it is now a well-known fact that it took them until their semifinal against Wales before they actually won a game in normal time. Lucky? Certainly. But there is doubtless some truth in the old adage that teams make their own luck, and Santos’ cautious approach has helped tip the odds in Portugal’s favour.
Where weaker men would have bowed to media pressure in the face of such defensive displays, Santos stuck characteristically rigid to his footballing principles. Acknowledging Portugal’s talent deficit, Santos hasn’t been afraid to order his players to stand off instead of press high. His four-man midfield has usually been entirely comprised of central players, making it extremely difficult for opponents to play straight through the middle. On the break, they’ve looked to play direct to star man Cristiano Ronaldo, supplemented by the occasional run from deep. Though it hasn’t necessarily extracted the most from their best players, it has enabled them to function very effectively as a unit. It may come as no surprise to learn Santos has a degree in electrical engineering.
By its very nature, international management is a job that seems more suited to problem-solvers than idealists, technocrats rather than visionaries. The upshot is that the most unlikely and unglamourous coaches can succeed. Santos’ unusual selection has occasionally left Portugal looking like an amorphous blob, but it has become increasingly clear that their shapelessness has been by design rather than accident, their entire strategy custom-built rather than ready-made. Perhaps it really isn’t too far a leap to suggest The Engineer is the perfect international coach, after all.
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