Braga no 'The Times'

From The Times

November 30, 2009

Braga are tilting the balance of power in Portugal

Gabriele Marcotti

How many chief executives of clubs in the Barclays Premier League can you name? Half a dozen? We spend most of our time talking about players and managers, and yet there is plenty of evidence that a well-run club with a strong medium-term plan can succeed regardless of who goes out on the pitch and who sits on the bench.

Consider the case of Braga. They are one point behind Benfica in the Portuguese league with a game in hand — they host mid-table União Leiria tonight. They are also one of the surprise packages in European football.

Braga have conceded only five league goals all season, far and away the best defensive performance in any leading European league. What’s more, they have beaten up on the traditional powers of Portuguese football, defeating Porto, Sporting and Benfica.

All this from a club with only one domestic honour in their trophy cabinet, the Portuguese Cup they won more than 40 years ago, and who have never finished higher than fourth.

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To be fair, Braga have been in the top five in all but one of the past six seasons. And they won the Intertoto Cup last year (no laughing at the back, please). The success is usually credited to Jesualdo Ferreira, who arrived to coach the club in the summer of 2003 and departed for Porto three years later.

Ferreira is no doubt an expert coach, but surely his presence nearly four years ago cannot explain why they continue to impress. Especially because, after Ferreira’s departure, Braga have had no fewer than six coaches in 3½ seasons. The latest is Domingos, a former Porto striker who took over in the summer.

So if the success is not down to managerial genius or stability, what is it? Big-money signings? Hardly. Braga are very much a selling club. Year on year their better players leave; last season was the turn of Nuno Frechaut, the defender, who joined Metz, and César Peixoto, the attacking midfield player, who moved to Benfica. And they are generally replaced by players who cost nothing, whether free transfers or loans.

Even then, of this year’s newcomers, only Hugo Viana, the former Newcastle United midfield player who arrived on loan from Valencia, has made an impact.

Nor is it a case of Braga having a stellar academy. The only home-grown player who is a regular is the goalkeeper, Eduardo, who recently became first-choice for Portugal as well.

The bulk of the starting XI is made up of Brazilians who have bounced around a number of Portuguese clubs, such as Alan, Evaldo and Paulo César. Six of the regulars are aged 29 or over, so there is no shortage of experience.

But, beyond that, it’s hard to find a pattern to explain this success. Unless you turn to the one constant at the club: António Salvador, their wheeler-dealer president.

Salvador negotiates most deals personally, whether it’s securing a stadium sponsorship deal or acquiring a player from another club for a pittance. In a league that mirrors the Clydesdale Bank Premier League in terms of predictability — the “big three” of Porto, Benfica and Sporting have won all but two titles since it was set up in 1934 — Braga have become an alternative to the established elite.

And perhaps their success should not be that surprising. By not handing absolute power to a coach, Salvador is ensuring some level of continuity and long-term planning.

He does not run the risk of his coach looking for a “quick fix” — swapping longer-term building for short-term results — in order to save his job. And if his coach is poached by a bigger club, as happened with Ferreira and Jorge Jesus, who left to join Benfica last summer, the framework is in place to weather the storm.

Of course, this is not a one-size-fits-all policy of success. If you have an Arsène Wenger or a Sir Alex Ferguson at your disposal, it makes sense to give them control. And, even if you don’t, it is generally wise to defer footballing decisions to your coach.

Yet the Braga case suggests that money and coaches — two supposedly indispensable building blocks — may not be as crucial to success as we may think. Equally, the importance of strong leadership at club level and a clear long-term blueprint, independent of who is actually coaching the club, too often gets underappreciated.