Portugal’s coaches and players are all the rage in part thanks to links forged between academia and the game

They always knew Ruben Amorim was a special one at the faculty of human kinetics. “I interviewed him for the course and from the start it was obvious,” says Prof António Veloso, José Mourinho’s former classmate, who runs the high-performance football coaching course at the faculty, which is affiliated to the University of Lisbon.

“The students needed to do an essay on specialist topics and Ruben’s results were fantastic. He had a leadership role in the group. When we were doing tactical drills on the pitch all the other students were looking at Ruben’s and asking for his opinion. But he was very humble.”