*Wolves target Vitor Pereira is explosive, intense and desperate for a Premier League chance.*
“My CV speaks for itself,” Vitor Pereira stated when defending himself against the wrath of angry Everton fans.
Well yes, in a way it certainly does. Thirteen managerial jobs, some roaring successes, some catastrophic failures and some random outposts. Porto (successive league titles: good), 1860 Munich (relegation: bad) and Al Ahli and Al Shabab (random, but you can probably conjure up a reason why he went to Saudi Arabia).
That list in full, to save you heading to Wikipedia: Sanjoanense (2004-2005), Espinho (2005-2007), Santa Clara (2008-2010), Porto (2011-2013), Al Ahli (2013-2014), Olympiacos (2015), Fenerbahce (2015-2016), 1860 Munich (2017), Shanghai SIPG (2017-2020), Fenerbahce (2021), Corinthians (2022), Flamengo (2023), Al Shabab (2024).
What you don’t see there is a Premier League club, which means that if, as expected , he becomes the manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers in the coming days, Pereira will tick off something he has yearned for for many years.
“I was so close to being a Premier League manager on three different occasions,” Pereira said just a few months ago.
“Small things stopped it from happening each time, but in the future I believe I will be there.
“My career so far has been a big journey, and I am in love with beautiful football. I really believe my next move will be to a top league in the world: the Premier League, La Liga, or Serie A — one of these places. This is my target for the future and I think it’s just a question of time.”
It seems it was just a question of time. But — and it’s OK to ask because, well, we didn’t know much either — who exactly is Pereira?
In England, he is mostly known for basically begging to be considered for the Everton job in early 2022. He was “very, very close” to becoming their manager but a public backlash kind of got in the way, including some graffiti being plastered over a wall in Merseyside which read “Pereira out Lampard in.”
Pereira gave a lengthy interview with Sky Sports News in which he was very nice to the fans who had taken an instant dislike to him, calling them “passionate” and insisting the attacks weren’t personal against him.
Lampard got the gig and Pereira went to Corinthians in Brazil instead.
The 56-year-old, whose playing career saw him flit around the lower leagues in Portugal as a midfielder before working his way up said leagues as a manager, has won league titles in his home country (Porto), Greece (Olympiacos) and China (Shanghai SIPG), as well as a few cups. It’s a decent trophy cabinet, but why has he never managed in a top-five league?
When asking people in the game about his reputation, two words crop up more than any others: intense and controversial.
For text-based evidence of that unstinting emotion and vulnerability, there is no more powerful example than this passage from A Journey Through Portuguese Football, by Tom Kundert in 2013.
“I am unable to separate football and my personal life,” Pereira said. “I take my professional problems home with me. Sometimes I’m at home in body but I am absent, because my mind is thinking about football.
“I believe I’ve become socially introverted, I am aware of that. I live in a world completely apart, thinking about, working and reflecting on my ideas.
“I’ve closed in on myself in relation to my friends, to going out. I’ve become dependent on football. I feel the need to stop, but when I go on holiday I take my work in my head.
“I believe people are different, they put up barriers in several aspects of their life, but I don’t have that capacity.
“Ideas come to me in my sleep. I wake up and note them down.
“It’s an illness, an obsession and it’s exhausting.”
Wolves, then, are getting someone who, for better or worse, is going to give his all, but does he have the nous to lead them to safety?
His recent stint in Brazilian football reflects a microcosm of his career: haphazard, unpredictable and controversial.
He did well at Corinthians, guiding them to fourth in the table and showing tactical flexibility, switching from an initial direct style that didn’t work to more of an organised, possession-based game with a high line, which did.
Some of the most experienced players at Corinthians didn’t take to Pereira’s temper too well — something that has happened throughout his career. It’s his way or no way, and that can prove problematic or explosive.
The fans took to him though and he was offered a new contract to stay, but he turned it down as he had to go and look after his ill mother-in-law back in Portugal. It all ended on good terms with a nice farewell press conference.
And then — and here’s the controversial side — just a month later, he ended up at Flamengo instead, to the incandescent fury of all Corinthians fans. He lasted just three months there, taking a side that had won the Copa Libertadores in 2022 and reducing them to a rabble, losing important matches including a Club World Cup semi-final to Al Hilal. He was desperately unpopular there, meaning Pereira is no longer welcome at Flamengo or Corinthians.
Tactically, he has enlisted numerous training courses during his career. At Porto, where he took over in 2011 having previously been Andre Villas-Boas’ assistant, his team featured James Rodriguez, Jackson Martinez, Danilo, Eliaquim Mangala, Nicolas Otamendi and future Wolves schemer Joao Moutinho. Pereira played 4-3-3, although it was not uncommon to build up with a 3-2-5 structure in attack.
“For me the most important quality in football is intelligence,” he said of his time there during a tactical masterclass with The Coaches’ Voice .
“We need to understand the moment to do it, when we accelerate the game to attack, when we accelerate the game to defend. This is what we did with Porto.”
At Fenerbahce, meanwhile, he played more of a 3-4-3, although his time there, despite handing Arda Guler his debut, went badly. They were fifth when he was sacked after just five months. He also had issues with Mesut Ozil, who threw a bib at Pereira after he was left as an unused substitute for a league game.
In terms of his tactics, Pereira is a manager who adapts to the quality of his players, although he seems to prefer to build through the third in wide areas, perhaps an area where Wolves are not the strongest at the moment.
He is known more for defensive structure than high-intensity pressure off the ball, which should follow Wolves in terms of becoming more compact first, rather than asking them to fundamentally change their approach with a high press. Cataclysmic defensive incompetence is the first wrong he needs to put right at Molineux.
One thing you would point out from his career is that his teams have mostly been one of the dominant forces in their league, i.e. Olympiacos, Fenerbahce and Porto. Relegation battles have been rare — and one of those, at 1860 Munich in the Bundesliga, did not end well.
On that front, it will be interesting to see if he imposes a style that is dominant on the ball, or employs a more pragmatic approach that raises the floor of the team and stops them leaking goals.
You get the impression this could veer wildly in one direction or the other, given Pereira’s explosive nature.
He could click with the Portuguese and Brazilian players and get Wolves playing the winning football he has enlisted at various stages of his career and guide them to mid-table safety… or he could fall out with everyone, lamp Matt Doherty and be sacked before April.
Either way, you get the impression that Pereira’s Wolves tenure is not going to be dull.
