Who is... Bruno Lage? Ex-Wolves and Benfica boss leading Diriyah's debut RSL campaign
There is so much more to being a manager than just being a competent coach.
Of course, you need to be an astute tactician and to be able to work with players to improve them both as individuals and as a collective. However, the role encompasses so much more.
That is even more pronounced for a club that’s playing its first-ever season in the top flight and is largely made up of players that have only just arrived this summer.
Turning a group of individuals into a cohesive collective is no mean feat, and that is the challenge that faces Bruno Lage having been appointed by Diriyah Club, newly promoted to the Roshn Saudi League.
But here we explain exactly why the 50-year-old Portuguese appears the perfect man for the job.
The right project
After success with Benfica, and time spent in the English Premier League with Wolverhampton Wanderers, Lage was after something more than simply another coaching appointment. He was pining for a project, something that he could build and mould in his own vision for the game.
“It would be ideal to find a project made to measure,” Lage wrote on the Coaches’ Voice website in 2024. “One that matches our ideas in terms of playing, training, leadership, our excellence-oriented culture, which is very much our DNA, and talented youth ready to join professional football.
Short-termstabilitycanbeconqueredwithresultsbut,morethanever,clubsmustlookatmanagersandunderstandwhattheycanprovideinthelongerterm.Bruno Lage, Diriyah Club manager
“Short-term stability can be conquered with results but, more than ever, clubs must look at managers and understand what they can provide in the longer term.
“And, given the existing players and available investment, what are the financial and competitive results the manager can realistically achieve?”
Diriyah Club, even given its own history, offers an almost clean slate from which to begin - and an exciting project with a view to the future as much as the now.
A football brain
While there is so much more to Lage as a manager, first and foremost he’s a great football coach, and is renowned for his deep thinking about, and of, the game.
Having worked for so long in Benfica’s academy, and studied Physical Education, Health and Sport, it’s understandable that Lage is such an astute teacher.
Yet he’s also highly academic with how he views the game having authored two books, including Football: Developing a Know-How, which explores tactical periodisation, the construction of a game model, and the relationship between training exercises and the intended style of play.
“I used to say we’re not teaching them to play football,” Lage told the Wolves’ official website in 2022. “We’re teaching them to play as a team in the way we want to play.”
Attention to detail
Lage understands that beside the tactical approach, it’s the small things that make the difference between success or otherwise.
“The way he speaks, organises and his attention to detail is incredible,” said England international Connor Coady, Wolves captain during Lage’s time in the English Midlands.
At Wolves, that included creating - in consultation with his players - individual development plans for each player that then fed into the overall strategy for the team.
Lage also introduced expanded analysis and video analysis facilities so players could examine the team’s movements and identify small positional improvements that could be made.
“That’s a space that when I came, I talked about with [Wolves owners] Jeff [Shi] and Scott [Sellars],” Lage said. “We need to build a room and a conference space for the players to prepare the next game and also to watch ourselves, the way we are playing and to see the little things that we need to improve.”
Building superstars
Through his work with the Benfica academy, and later as senior coach, Lage played an important role in the development of many players that have gone on to achieve at the highest levels of the game; players such as Al Hilal full-back Joao Cancelo, Ruben Dias, Bernardo Silva, Ederson, Andre Gomes, and Goncalo Guedes.
Also as coach at Benfica, he was the first to truly appreciate the talent of Joao Felix, the reigning SPL Player of the Season, who had his breakout season under Lage as a teenager before his mega money move to Atletico Madrid.
“He’s not a No10,” Lage said to The Telegraph about Felix in 2023. “He’s not one to play behind the striker. I prefer to call him the ‘free striker’.
“He needs to play with a more orthodox striker who is in the box, a guy that Joao can find with passes. Joao plays between the lines, and in the space behind a defence.”
It’s a role that few, until Jorge Jesus last year, also realised. So important was Lage in Felix’s development, in fact, the Al Nassr superstar has never forgotten how he helped shaped his career.
“I already thanked him and he knows he’s special,” Felix said after his move to Madrid in 2019. “He was the one who got me in there and who truly believed in me.”
