André Villas-Boas

Villas-Boas took an intriguing career path in becoming a football manager. Having never played football professionally, André became a licensed coach at the age of 17. In 1994 he was invited to work as a trainee with Porto's youth-team coaches by manager Sir Bobby Robson and he later took charge of charge of two international matches in 2000 for the British Virgin Islands. Villas-Boas then became part of Jose Mourinho's coaching team at Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan. Indeed he spent three years with the Blues and helped guide the club to two league titles, two league cup triumphs as well as the FA Cup. In 2009, Villas-Boas entered club management for the first time with Academica in Portugal's top flight and he was quick to turn their foturnes. On the date of his appointment, Academica were bottom of the table and without a win. He went onto guide Academica to league safety and a League Cup semi-final. Following this success, Villas-Boas was then confirmed as the new manager of Porto on June 2, 2010. His first and only season was certainly one to remember as Porto won the Portuguese Supercup, the domestic league, the Europa League and the Portuguese Cup. Their league triumph league also set records as Porto won by a margin of 21 points and did not lose a game all season. As a result, Villas-Boas became the youngest manager in history to win a European title. André was then appointed manager of Chelsea in June 2011, before he later joined Spurs prior to the 2012/13 campaign. In his first season in charge at White Hart Lane, he guided Tottenham to a 5th place finish in the Barclays Premier League. The Portuguese subsequently hit the road. He won the Russian league title and Russian Cup with Zenit St Petersburg then led Shanghai SIPG to the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League and runners-up placings in both Chinese league and cup. In 2019 he took over at Marseille and led the club to a runners-up spot behind Paris St Germain after the French league was curtailed by the coronavirus.