Dorival Júnior’s assistant on his role and duties at Corinthians

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Central do Timão

·21. September 2025

Dorival Júnior’s assistant on his role and duties at Corinthians

By Henrique Pereira / Central do Timão Editorial Team

Hired on April 28 of this year, Dorival Júnior and Lucas Silvestre, his son and assistant coach, have already led Corinthians in 26 matches, with 12 wins, eight draws, and six losses, maintaining a 56% success rate. In an interview with Meu Timão, Lucas discussed the technical staff's adaptation to the club and analyzed their work.

“So far, it's been 4 very intense months. We had to adapt to the club, the players, the staff. Today we feel much more adapted to the club, the athletes, and they also feel more adapted to our work, already executing many commands automatically.”, said the assistant.

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Photo: Rodrigo Coca/Ag. Corinthians

“The minimum period I see as necessary for a coach to implement his work is 5, 6 months. From there, you feel the evolution of the athletes, the team as a whole. Today we already have well-established ideas, but we still have much more to evolve as a team. Things are improving and still have a long way to go to be even better.”, he added.

Lucas Silvestre also detailed his role within Dorival Júnior's technical staff. The assistant coach revealed that he acts as a kind of intermediary between the coach and other departments of the club, conducting an information screening.

“The first screening of the work goes through me. The issues of physical preparation, the Medical Department, analysts' data, all come to me. From there, I streamline it and bring to Dorival only the things that need his intervention.”, he explained.

Throughout the interview, the professional also addressed other important topics, such as the relationship with Fabinho Soldado, the football executive, the work done with the defensive system, and preparation for the Copa do Brasil semifinal. Check out other excerpts from the interview below:

Relationship with Fabinho Soldado

“Fabinho is a fundamental person for the mechanism to work. I had already worked with him at Flamengo, but in another role. He is an extremely transparent person who helps us at all times in the day-to-day problem-solving.”

Defensive improvement of Corinthians

“Right when we arrived, we identified that a specific work was necessary for quick defensive evolution. We conducted very intense training sessions, used many videos to develop these ideas. The athletes embraced what we presented to them. From day one, we showed that marking starts with the two men up front, and we need to make our forwards aware that they also need to help in the defensive phase. Today we don't concede goals in 50% of our games, and this kind of data validates our work. The athletes have been performing better and better.”

Injuries in the squad

“Injuries are common in all teams. We had many occasional injuries, like Carrillo's, Yuri's, Hugo Farias'. The players' physical data have also improved a lot, they are getting better day by day. The short squad suffers with any type of injury, but the arrival of the youth players has helped us a lot. Losing athletes hurts the technical staff, but we need to be prepared for this because these things happen.”

Relationship with Memphis

“I have a very good relationship with him, largely because of English. But nowadays he hardly needs to communicate in English with us, only when it's something deeper. Day to day, he communicates with us and the athletes in Portuguese. Working with an athlete like Memphis is very rewarding because he helps us not only on the field but also commands respect from the other athletes. Of course, if he's not performing, he will step aside for another athlete. He understands this and knows it's a matter of merit.”

Preparation for the Copa do Brasil semifinal

“Our focus at this moment is 100% on the Brazilian Championship. Evolution within the championship as a team is what will allow us to reach a better level to play the two semifinals.”

View on the fans

“I wanted to praise the Corinthians fans. It was always terrible to play against the Corinthians fans, and today I feel that in my favor. In the game against Rio, the fans' celebration was beautiful. They sang louder than the home fans, and even concentrated on the field, you can't miss it. And it's a very supportive crowd. We were never booed during the games. This support is fundamental, we can only thank the fans for that.”

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