By When Vitor Matos took charge of Swansea in November 2025, the talk was all about avoiding relegation. Almost one year on, the Swans sit top of the Championship 10 games into the season — and the 38-year-old Portuguese coach is the story of the season.
In retrospect, the hire looks like a masterstroke, even though Matos had only managed 12 senior games before moving to Wales — those coming in the Portuguese second division with Maritimo. Behind those 12 games, however, lives a coaching journey spanning 23 years across many continents and a variety of roles.
Vitor Matos (Credits: BBC Sport)
Klopp’s Disciple — But Not Only Klopp’s
The most eye-catching line on Matos’s CV is the five years he spent working under Jurgen Klopp as an elite development coach at Liverpool, before joining Red Bull Salzburg as Pep Lijnders’ number two. And the influence shows: building a squad on a foundation of counter-pressing feels entirely apt.
“Liverpool influenced me a lot in terms of counter-pressing, pressing, intensity, and what makes you grow as a team,” Matos said. “The most important thing is how much you believe in your idea and this style is how I see football. That’s why I wanted this to be the foundation for our team.”
But it would be unfair to paint Matos with a Klopp-shaped brush entirely. “I started at a really young age wanting to be a coach and was influenced by many different styles,” he added. His time at FC Porto taught him positional play — “understanding the spaces, the timings, waiting for the ball to arrive to you at the right time” — while spells in Portugal and China, including Shandong Taishan, added more layers to a game model that blends gegenpressing intensity with positional patience.
The First Priority: Confidence
Matos replaced Alan Sheehan with one clear mission: “The most important thing was to make the team feel confident again, to make the players fall in love with playing with each other,” he explained.
His route there was aggression. “We wanted to take steps first on making the team much more aggressive without the ball. Giving them that boost of confidence by demanding a more aggressive game, creating a good feeling after a high regain or a wonderful tackle — it creates a better mood inside the group.”
There was also a structural fix: before he arrived, the club had been flip-flopping between a back four and a back five. “I thought the squad was built for a back four at that time and to give consistency to the players, sticking with that was another priority. So, in our 4-3-3, we had a clear idea — to become a pressing and counter-pressing team, brave enough to take that risk.”
Players First, System Second
What stands out most about Matos is his approach to implementation. He has fixed footballing principles, but he believes the route to accomplishing those ideas must be shaped by the players at his disposal. He takes a holistic approach to each player, seeking to understand them deeply — as footballers and human beings — before deciding how they fit his system.
“When you start from the players you have in front of you, you start from a position of comfort for them. This allows the players to be more confident which helps you to build your idea over time,” he said.
The results speak for themselves: seven wins from 10 Championship games and a place at the summit. If Swansea keep playing with this mix of Klopp-style intensity and Porto-style positional intelligence, the Premier League might be calling sooner than anyone expected.
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Source: BBC Sport — read the full story there.
