Lage out to silence doubters with bold new style for Wolves
Coach, who made his name with a high-scoring Benfica side, says players must forget their past under Nuno
One of Bruno Lage’s first demands after his appointment at Wolves was for a new auditorium to be built at the club’s Compton training ground. Attention to detail and clarity with his players is crucially important to the 45-year-old, who is the latest Portuguese coaching obsessive to be entrusted with taking over an ambitious Premier League club.
In the short term, the focus is all on tomorrow’s opening game against Leicester, but this moment has actually been almost 30 years in the making. Lage was just 17 when he was first struck by the coaching bug at Vitoria de Setubal, and inquiries over why he started at such a young age prompt inevitable comparisons with Jose Mourinho.
“Because I didn’t have the ability to play football!” he says, laughing. “I started very young as an assistant coach and never thought about the future. Now I try to do the best work here to make everyone have a big smile. In the Premier League, it’s like playing the Champions League. Every week you’re playing against a top manager and top players, so it’s going to be difficult for everyone.”
Lage has not operated in the technical area for more than a year since his departure from Benfica, and unquestionably has a task on his hands to prove he was the right man to succeed Nuno Espirito Santo.
Nuno’s first 2½ years were scintillating, as he led the club to the Championship title, an FA Cup semi-final and consecutive seventh-place finishes in the Premier League. Yet in the final 18 months, and particularly the final, excruciating campaign, it all became dour and predictable. Lage is a client of Gestifute, the agency run by Jorge Mendes, a key figure at Wolves since the takeover by Fosun International, but a cursory glance at his record at Benfica confirms he is a more than credible option. After taking over in January 2019, Benfica won 18 of their remaining 19 games, scoring 72 goals, including a record 10-0 thrashing of Nacional, to claim the title. “Football without goals is nothing,” Lage says. “That’s why, for me, it is so important to create a dynamic with the players. I don’t want to ask them to do things they can’t do. When we restart the competition, we need to show that it’s very hard to play against us. “What Nuno did was truly amazing, but we must forget the past. I have different ideas, I don’t know if they are better or worse, but we try to play in a different way.” Lage is full of energy on the training ground. Very demanding and thorough, he is hands-on with players in sessions, as he works to implement a new philosophy and style of play. He holds regular meetings, either with the squad or one-to-one, and is far more involved with other departments than Nuno ever was.
Lage has previous experience of English football, after working as an assistant coach with Carlos Carvalhal at Sheffield Wednesday and Swansea City. “The time I spent in the Championship did a lot to prepare me for my future. The competition is very hard,” he says. “Playing Saturday-tuesday-saturday, you learn to recover in a different way, and there are different mentalities. I also learnt about the intensity: that’s why we train hard every day. The time I spent with Carlos was very important – the way he worked, and the way he allowed his staff to work with freedom and responsibility.”
Lage has inherited a squad crammed with experience, with captain Conor Coady the beating heart of the dressing room. The strong Portuguese contingent increased when goalkeeper Jose Sa signed from Olympiacos and Wolves have carefully added other players: the promising winger Francisco Trincao has signed for the season from Barcelona, while Rayan Aitnouri, 20, joined permanently. The return of Raul Jimenez, who fractured his skull in November, will also lift morale.
“There’s a strong spirit,” Lage says. “This is a very exciting time.”