Roberto Martinez survived a generational change

The new head coach of the Portuguese national team, which reached the quarterfinals at the World Cup in Qatar, but was remembered primarily for the scandals associated with its leader Cristiano Ronaldo, was Roberto Martinez. The Spanish specialist earned a reputation as an effective mentor in the Belgian team. He has been in charge of this team since 2016, and under the leadership of Martinez, she climbed to the top of the International Football Federation (FIFA) ranking. True, Martinez failed to win at least one prestigious title, and at the Qatari championship the Belgians performed much worse than the Portuguese, having taken off after the group stage.

The Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) has announced the appointment of Roberto Martinez as head coach of the national team. He took over the post, which became vacant at the end of December. Fernando Santos, who occupied it, resigned after the World Cup in Qatar. The performance of the Portuguese team at the championship left mixed impressions. She advanced to the playoffs from the first place in the group, defeated the Swiss in the 1/8 finals, but in the next round cut off on Moroccans quoted much lower. At the same time, the game of the Portuguese remained in the shadow of stories related to their leader, five-time winner of the Golden Ball, Cristiano Ronaldo. At first, the leading media resources discussed his scandalous parting with Manchester United, then – the requests of the Portuguese functionaries to rewrite the goal for the forward, downtrodden Uruguayans Bruno Fernandes, and after that – the sensational decision of Santos to seat the superstar in the play-offs on the bench.

When announcing the contract with Robert Martinez, FPF President Fernando Gomes called the incident “an important moment” in the history of the structure. And in fact, he has formal reasons to be proud of the deal.

The fact is that Martinez, who will turn 50 in the summer, has already managed to turn into a fairly prominent character in the market of football coaches.

The Spaniard gained a reputation by working with the Belgian national team. He headed it in 2016, and in 2018, the Belgians for the first time in their history climbed to the top line in the ranking of the International Football Federation and kept it for quite a long time, demonstrating exceptional stability.

However, this period cannot be called unambiguously successful. Having at his disposal a group of high-class players, who are usually referred to as the “golden generation” of Belgian football – Kevin De Bruyne, Thibaut Courtois, Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku, Jan Vertonghen, Dries Mertens – Roberto Martinez never won a single significant title. At the top tournaments, the Belgian team stumbled all the time on the outskirts of the final. And on the neighbors – only once, when at the 2018 World Cup in Russia she lost in the semifinals to the French, after which she took bronze, defeating the British. The next two top competitions were much worse for the Belgians. At the European Championships in 2021, they retired in the quarterfinals after a collision with the Italians, and in 2022 at the world championship in Qatar, they generally suffered a crushing failure. The aged “golden generation” was unable to overcome even the group round. On it, the Belgian team somehow, largely thanks to luck, managed only with Canadian outsiders, after which they were defeated by the Moroccans and then tied with the Croats, without scoring goals in these matches. At the end of the World Cup, Martinez parted ways with the Belgian team.

The Portuguese team seems to be a good material for the implementation of his ideas. Unlike the Qatari version of the Belgian national team, it, in any case, does not look like one that is about to lose its full potential.

The lion’s share of the application of the Portuguese at the World Cup were either very young players, like Juan Felix, Rafael Lean, Goncalo Ramos, Diogo Costa, Diogo Dalot, Vitinha, or in their prime, like Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva, Juan Cancelo, Ruben Dias , Ruben Neves. Even for these experienced players, career decline is still far off. The reserve is good too. At the last European Youth Championship, the Portuguese team took silver, and five of its representatives were included in the list of the best football players of the tournament of 23 people compiled by the experts of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).

There were only two exceptions in Qatar – the 39-year-old defender Pepe and the 37-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo, who moved to the An-Nasr club from Saudi Arabia before the New Year: celebrities go to this championship, as a rule, to finish the game. However, at a press conference on his appointment, Roberto Martinez said that Ronaldo remains on his list of candidates for the national team, and in the near future he intends to “sit down and talk with him” about the future.

Alexey Dospekhov