Renato Paiva On The Pressure Faced By Managers In Brazil

It has been a rollercoaster 2025 for Renato Paiva.

Born on March 22, 1970, in Pedrógão Pequeno, Portugal, Paiva was football-obsessed from the very beginning, be that playing for his city’s youth teams, reading magazines like Onze Mondial, and playing at the amateur level. Similar to others like Brian Dunseth and Leonardo Bertozzi, Paiva knew from the very start that he wanted to become involved in the football industry. He finally got his breakthrough in 2004 by joining Benfica’s academy, where he helped develop a number of future stars like Bernardo Silva, João Félix, Renato Sanches, Gonçalo Ramos, Ederson, João Cancelo, and Rúben Dias, and coached all of the different age groups, all the way up to the Benfica B team.

Paiva spent two years coaching in Portugal’s second tier before deciding to make the move to Ecuador in December 2020, where he led Independiente del Valle to their first-ever national title. This would attract the attention of LAFC, who brought him to California for preliminary discussions. But just when Paiva looked set to sign on the dotted line, his players caught wind and started blowing up his phone, begging him to stay. Paiva caved and remained at Independiente, but rather than building for a strong 2022, the team sold various key figures and failed to reinforce. It’s why, midway through the campaign, Paiva decided to depart the club and take charge of Mexican side León on May 30, 2022.

“I was upset at that moment when Grupo Pachuca (which owns Pachuca and León) appeared. President Jesús Martínez Patiño called me to take charge at Pachuca, and I said I’m staying at Independiente, and six months later, he called me again to take charge at León. I was a little upset with the process at Independiente. I also looked at the terms of the contract, and I realized I couldn’t say no,” stated Paiva in an exclusive World Football Index interview. “I ended up accepting going to Mexico, especially because it was a very high-profile championship with very good players and a lot of money. Besides that, it’s a style of football that attracts me, that I really like, which is a very attacking style of football where you try to score a lot of goals. It wasn’t just the league or player quality, but I really identified with their style of play and ended up accepting the move to León.”

After an impressive spell in Mexico that saw him earn the acclaim of leading North American pundits like Herculez Gomez, Kevin Egan, and Taylor Twellman, Paiva took charge of Brazilian side Bahia on December 6, 2022, guiding the team to the 2023 Campeonato Baiano before resigning after nine months at the helm. Paiva then returned to Mexico and took charge of Toluca, where he helped plant the seeds for their sensational 2025 season, before heading back to Brazil. He took charge of Botafogo, who were coming off their maiden Copa Libertadores title as well as their first league title in three decades. After a shaky start to proceedings, Botafogo found their footing under Paiva and won six of eight before heading to North America for the FIFA Club World Cup.

Botafogo beat Seattle Sounders 2-1 in their own backyard before heading to California, where they pulled off a shock 1-0 win against newly crowned European champions Paris Saint-Germain. And after holding Atlético Madrid to a 1-0 defeat, Botafogo went to Philadelphia to face off against fellow Brazilian side Palmeiras in the Round of 16. In an even-keeled match-up, Palmeiras narrowly escaped with the victory in the City of Brotherly Love. There was no brotherly love for Paiva; 10 days after American businessman and Botafogo owner John Textor kissed him in the midst of a post-match interview following their PSG win, Paiva learned that he had been sacked for the first time ever. He was out of work for just two weeks before taking a job at Fortaleza, where he remained for a month before being given his marching orders.

“There’s too much external pressure in Brazil; everyone wants to win. No one accepts losing, and everyone always wants to win. That doesn’t exist in football; even the best teams like Barcelona, Manchester City, and Real Madrid don’t always win, and here, the fans have no patience for defeats. I’ll give you the example of Flamengo with Filipe Luís, who, as soon as he doesn’t win two games in his burgeoning coaching career, is under a lot of pressure. And the outside world has a big influence on player development and peace of mind. There’s no time to work and develop, nobody has the patience to wait; either the results come, or you’re done. Of course, football is about results – I accept that. But you have to give it time for the results to appear, and you don’t have time here.”

“Brazil is the country in the world that has the most constant coaching dismissals; it’s a cultural phenomenon because no one has the patience to work with young players. No one has the patience to wait for a player to develop. For example, today, one of the best players in the Brazilian championship is Vasco da Gama’s 19-year-old player, Rayan. A lot of people in Europe are already looking at Rayah, and Vasco has managed to keep hold of the player, and he is gradually becoming one of the most important players in the championship. That’s what should also happen in training: let him play, but also improve the schedule even further, so the player can train more. Here, players can’t train because they’re playing every three days. You play a great game on Saturday, and you’re Maradona, and on Wednesday, you play a bad game, and you’re the worst player in the world. This doesn’t develop either players or coaches or Brazilian football.”

Paiva has spent the past four months living in Rio de Janeiro, reflecting on a stressful 2025 and carefully planning out his next step. Having rejected offers from Portugal, Colombia, Paraguay and Egypt, Paiva is well aware that he will have to return to the coaching game sooner rather than later. He might even decide to return to the Brasileirão – but if he does, he’ll be well aware of the league’s unique demands and the need for an instant adaptation.

“There are so many games, and people don’t have patience…if things are bad, the process is flawed. This also makes you lose your passion and your love for the game, and it makes it become mechanical. You’re going from playing on Wednesday to Saturday, and you don’t appreciate the wait because you’re playing almost every day. When I was little, my club would play on Sunday and only play again the following Sunday, and I would have to wait a week for the game. That enthusiasm on Friday to see my team on Sunday, that passion disappears because everything is immediate. It’s like a factory with game after game, and this is a very serious problem for me in Brazilian football.”

“I don’t have the solution; I have an opinion – Brazil doesn’t train players. I developed young players at Benfica, training five times a week, five team training sessions, and four individual training sessions. A young Benfica player would do nine training sessions per week, and then he played on the weekend. In Brazil, you don’t train. You go to the Under-20 Championships, as well as the Youth or Under-19 Championships. You have the same busy schedule, but you don’t train. How do you develop a young player without training? You don’t have the training environment where you repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and correct the player when he makes a mistake. You can’t stop to correct it during the game, where a player’s mistake doesn’t impact the result, the fans, or the crowd, and many players have to train physically because they have physical problems. But with Brazil, they only think about heavy calendars and not training, only playing, which stops the player’s development. Player development in Brazil needs a revolution, not an evolution.”