At the end of 2018, we covered a handful of stories about manager Paulo Sousa.
The 48-year-old, who recently left his job at Chinese side Tianjin Tianhai, was heavily linked to Southampton, with reports from Portugal saying he was ‘ready to be the next Portuguese manager in the Premier League’.
His arrival at St. Mary’s never happened, but Sousa is clearly up for a new challenge, as he made pretty clear in a five-page interview with newspaper Record on Sunday.
Now besides his plans for the future, Sousa also talked about his past. And when asked about the time he’s had in the UK, where he’s worked at QPR, Swansea and Leicester City, the manager revealed a big regret for having left his position at the Welsh side.
“I went through the Championship and I gained a lot of experience, beyond the passion that football transmits,” Paulo Sousa told Record.
“I started at Queens Park Rangers, went to Swansea and passed sporadically at Leicester – the owners changed, they hired Eriksson, they offered me the position of manager of football but I did not accept it.”By manager, Sousa means a football director, as he really used the word in English and didn’t mean it like the Portuguese word for coach.
“It was a mistake to have left Swansea,” he said. “It’s one of those decisions that I regret, for being hasty. I want one day to return to the country and live that reality again in the Premier League.”
