Portuguese manager Paulo Sousa has given a long interview to newspaper A Bola this weekend.
The 49-year-old, who’s currently in charge of French side Bordeaux, recallled his entire career, which started in the Championship.
Paulo Sousa had been an assistant coach at the Portuguese national team in 2008, and soon got an invite to move to Queens Park Rangers, where he had his first job as a manager.
His time in West London only lasted five months, and later signed for Swansea City before moving to Leicester City. He claims to be happy for his time at the Liberty Stadium, where he feels responsible for their promotion to the Premier League a few years later.
“It wasn’t any option. It was only the circumstances of life and the opportunities that arose. Huw Jenikns realised that my type of football and my knowledge of the English league during the months I was at QPR were enough to be the right coach to continue the ideas he had in mind to reach the best results with Swansea,” Paulo Sousa told A Bola.
“And they were the best results, at the time, of the last 27 years. We were one point away from the play-offs, and then, with a little more investment and the improvement of all the game processes, it ended up happening with Brendan Rodgers.”
But the manager says he’s found a better place to work at Leicester City, since there was a big difference between the clubs at that time.
“Swansea’s facilities were very poor at the time. We had a training ground that, when it rained — and it rains almost every day there — would get flooded and we would go to an indoor of maybe 40 by 60 metres, with synthetic grass from the first generations.”
Paulo Sousa left Leicester City in January 2010, and has worked in six different countries since then.
He’s had jobs with Hungary’s Videoton, Tel Aviv in Israel, Swiss side Basel, Fiorentina in Italy’s Serie A, and China’s Tianjin Tianhai before moving to France, where he’s been at Bordeaux since March 2019.
