Exclusive interview with the latest Portuguese coach in Brazil, Rui Duarte | OneFootball

From Abel Ferreira to Jorge Jesus, from Leonardo Jardim to Luís Castro, we’ve seen several Portuguese coaches make their mark in Brazil over the past few years, and the latest to do so is Rui Pedro Viegas Silva Gomes Duarte.

Born on 16 September 1978, Rui Duarte was raised in Lisbon and came through Belenenses’ academy. He kicked off his professional journey with Olhanense in the Algarve and then Dragões Sandinenses in Vila Nova de Gaia, before returning to Belenenses, where he emerged as a key figure in midfield. Duarte then bounced around from Associação Naval 1º de Maio, Leixões SC and Estrela da Amadora before heading back to Olhanense, becoming a club icon and wearing the captain’s armband and even leading them back to the top flight after a 35-year absence. He then enjoyed a brief swansong at Farense before transitioning into coaching, enjoying spells on the touchline for Farense, Casa Pia, Trofense and Braga’s B team.

Duarte took charge of Braga’s first team in April 2024. Shortly afterwards his son Gustavo passed away at the age of 23 due to a heart ailment. Despite this tragedy, Duarte remained in charge for the rest of the campaign, followed by a brief spell at Marítimo. On 4 June 2025, he decided to leave Portugal for the first time and take charge of Campeonato Brasileiro Série B club Athletic Club. At the time, Athletic were playing in Brazil’s second tier for the first time ever, and they looked all but guaranteed to drop back down to the third division. Instead, Duarte helped the Esquadrão de Aço stave off the threat of relegation and finish 15th in the table. Having already led Farense and Trofense to promotion, he’ll be looking to do the same in Minas Gerais this season.

Zach Lowy spoke to Duarte in an exclusive PortuGOAL interview.

You’ve played against some of the best players to ever grace the Liga Portugal, but who was your toughest opponent?

Pablo Aimar was unbelievable. He was incredibly intelligent and had quick execution. He had incredible finesse. There’s also Hulk, who’s still playing today for Atlético Mineiro. He was very difficult to stop. Hulk didn’t enter my area of the pitch too often, but I felt that he could unlock a game at any moment. I faced so many Portuguese players like Jorge Costa, who was a benchmark as a centre-back and a benchmark for me. I faced the Brazilian goalscorer Mário Jardel, a player whose statistics speak for themselves; whenever the ball fell inside the penalty area, it was a goal.

There were quite a few great players that I faced like Nicolás Gaitán, the Argentine who played for Benfica many years ago, who also had a very similar skillset to Aimar, and Porto’s Colombian striker Radamel Falcao. That’s why they played for the best teams. They were very good, and you could notice that they were at such a high level. There are certain players who can’t reach that level for one reason or another, but when you have players of the very highest quality, anybody can identity that they’re at the next level.

Who are the best players that you’ve coached in your career so far?

That’s a good question. João Moutinho and Ricardo Horta at Braga were perhaps the two best players that I’ve ever coached, because of their intelligence, the way they interpreted the game, the way they played, and what they gave the team. They play in different positions but both are truly exceptional.

The last time I spoke to a Portuguese coach in Brazil (Renato Paiva), he lamented that in Brazil, there’s not enough time to train players because you’re constantly playing matches. Has that been your experience?

Last season, we had two congested periods, the month of September and the month of October, where it was extremely difficult, almost impossible to have all of our players recover fully for the next game. Given the context of the Brazilian Championship, we had 5-6 matches every three days, and you’d have certain away games where you’d have to travel two days and another two to return home, so you basically had to go back and wouldn’t have time to train. Often it simply wasn’t possible to train because we didn’t have any time, it was just about resting and understanding who was doing better physically.

The clubs here in Brazil invest a lot in recovery to minimise the players’ physical and mental issues. Almost all clubs have a psychologist and a nutritionist, who has a slightly different vision from the nutritionists who work in Europe. In Portugal, our nutritionists are much more focused on making adjustments and being in the kitchen. Here, the nutritionist plays a fundamental role, because they plan all the meals for the trips and training sessions in great detail. Everything has to be meticulously planned, and they are often with us on the training pitch. They’re very present and close to us, and try to understand the situation and analyse all the different challenges from the wear and tear.

After avoiding relegation in your first-ever season in Série B, what are the main objectives for Athletic this year?

We are a team that is growing, and that has grown a lot in recent years, but we didn’t have a very professional, well-prepared staff to keep up with this level of professionalism. But Athletic is preparing itself better and better, both in terms of infrastructure and in human resources, in having more qualified people. We’re still a small team, even by Série B standards, and we shouldn’t be ashamed to say it, but we know exactly what we want, and for sure, we will continue to grow.

But it’s true that during busy periods, we’d look around and see the other teams having a much greater quantity and quality of players than us, allowing them to rotate players from game to game and give some players a rest. As for us, we had some injuries and setbacks, but we still managed to be competitive and finish four points above the relegation zone. There were a few buckets of cold water along the journey, but we were always aware of reality and eventually we achieved the objective of staying up. We were also lucky in that our management structure – CEO, Sporting Director, President – ​​they are all very aware and very conscious of the reality we are in, which helped a lot in managing everyone’s expectations. We all knew it was going to be difficult, but we achieved our goal.

When you were a kid, you watched Portugal miss out on qualification to the 1988 and 1992 Euros and the 1982, 1990, 1994 and 1998 World Cup. Fast-forward to today, and they’re one of the best teams in the world. What has it been like to see this transformation?

I’ve followed it since I was young because football is my passion. I started playing from a young age. I did the World Cups collections of trading cards from the sticker albums with all the powerful teams like Brazil, Germany, France, and Spain. I think Portugal have grown a lot since the year 2000. We’ve become more consistent and we prepare our players better. We are a small country, but we have an incredible quality of players; nobody can deny that we have some of the best players in the world.

But I also think it’s largely a result of what was done in Portugal’s clubs in terms of the training and solid foundations at the clubs. Due to opportunity, but above all, due to necessity, we’ve started to develop players well, because we are not a country that can afford to buy very expensive players. Obviously, we have to introduce these young players early, and with so many players like Luís Figo, Rui Costa, Vítor Baía, Fernando Couto, Paulo Sousa impressing and then enjoying success abroad, the world has started to recognise Portuguese players as having a lot of quality.

This evolution has been happening since 2000, when we started to become a much more competitive national team, and with more ambition to win.

Lastly, just how far can Portugal aspire to in this upcoming World Cup?

We won the 2016 Euros and have since won two Nations Leagues thanks to a great deal of fantastic work by the Federation, providing excellent conditions that allow the players to fully focus and train properly for international matches. For years before this was never the case, but the football authorities started to understand the path forward, realising we had to evolve in terms of infrastructure, in terms of maximising the potential of our most talented players.

The quality of Portuguese players is undeniable. And today, it’s a source of pride for the nation to be at this level, where people are looking at us as perhaps not the main favourite ahead of Brazil, Germany, England, Spain, France and Argentina, but we’re probably right behind them, and given the quality of players, I think we can have a very strong World Cup performance. We have truly incredible players and a good coach as well, and we all believe that we can fight against any team. This makes us a strong and competent team with ambitions to one day win the World Cup.