Portugal has made it official who will be its next national coach.
To the surprise of many, the name chosen was Roberto Martinez, who had not even been appointed as a possible successor to Fernando Santos.
Let's see who is Roberto Martinez....
Roberto Martinez started his coaching career in the 2006/2007 season in charge of Swansea City.
After Swansea City he managed Wigan Athletic, Everton and finally the Belgian national team.
During his club career he won an FA CUP and a League One.
In his career as Belgian national coach, where he has at his command the famous golden generation of Belgium, where the maximum he achieved was a third place in the 2018 World Cup held in Russia.
As a Portuguese I can not leave my opinion.
I'll start by saying that I never thought that Portugal's national team would one day be coached by a Spanish coach.
In the same way that in Brazil there is a rivalry between Brazil and Argentina, there is also in some way a rivalry between Portugal and Spain, although on a smaller scale.
We no longer have the “Engineer” Fernando Santos, who reached at least the quarterfinals of the World Cup in Qatar, but a coach who didn't even get past the group stage.
Portugal hadn't had a foreign coach since 2008, Scolari being the last.
You can call me xenophobic, but I absolutely did not want to have a Spanish coach to coach the Portuguese national team.
Didn't we have any option of a Portuguese coach for the job?
Or did they not accept?
Jorge Jesus had publicly demonstrated his interest to coach the national team, even if he has a lot of Portuguese people that don't like him, I would rather have JJ as a coach than have a Spaniard.
What will happen if Portugal faces Spain in a European Championship final?
Will Martinez want to be linked to the history of his home country because they lost a final against him?
I know this last point is a digression, but...
As I am not the one who rules the Portuguese Football Federation, now all I can do is wait and see, and it may even happen that in some time Martinez will have proved that he is better than what I am saying, but until then I follow firmly that we had better options internally.
