During this international break, The Athletic is publishing a series of profiles on highly-rated managers from across Europe. First up is Porto’s Francesco Farioli…
If ever there was an example of Serie A’s parochial nature, consider the following. Twelve of the league’s 20 clubs changed their manager last summer. Yet all of them appeared to overlook one of Italy’s brightest coaching talents.
Some perhaps accepted they could no longer appeal to Francesco Farioli. His star has risen too high for teams in the no man’s land of mid-table or those fighting to stay up. The traditional title challengers and teams competing for a place in Europe settled, on the most part, for experience. Openings at Milan and Inter, for instance, could be looked upon as coming too soon for 36-year-old Farioli. And yet Cristian Chivu, who replaced Simone Inzaghi at the end of last season, got the Inter job on the back of just 13 games in charge of Parma over the previous four months, his only previous taste of senior management after several years at academy level.
It says a lot that arguably Italy’s most modern and progressive coaches work abroad, and have done for some time. Roberto De Zerbi, on whose staff Farioli worked at Benevento and Sassuolo, hasn’t been back to Serie A since he left for Shakhtar Donetsk of Ukraine in 2021, working in England and, more recently, France instead.
Farioli’s own intrepidness in seeking out the opportunities abroad that he has perhaps been denied at home has paid off.
Striking out on his own as a 32-year-old with Fatih Karagumruk (2021) and then Alanyaspor (2021-23), both in Turkey, showed an admirable appetite for risk. Forged in the chaos of the Turkish Super Lig, nothing could faze Farioli after that experience. He had to be more than a coach at those clubs, with his responsibilities extending far beyond the role’s normal remit in the modern game.
Away from his home country, Francesco Farioli has developed a reputation as a talented coach (Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
The path less taken has, in a relatively short space of time, opened up more varied prospects for Farioli than if he had waited for a gig that might never have materialised in Italy. He has, to his credit, shown an often underappreciated quality in the career of a coach — knowing when and with whom to make the next step.
Get in a room with Farioli and it is easy to see how this global citizen makes an instant impression. Smoother than many of his compatriots, he can converse in English at a far more fluent level than the more famous ‘international’ Italian coaches. There is, by contrast, none of the abrasive and explosive antics associated with the bigger names from the bel paese when it comes to managing up or handling the media. He comes across as a gentleman, in the mould of Carlo Ancelotti. Farioli’s grounding in Qatar’s Aspire Academy, with its historic links to Barcelona, once again underlines how he judged the way the world was changing in football very early.
Even if Farioli’s game model can be interpreted as quintessentially Italian, it has been repackaged and updated to work in today’s game. It appealed to Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Dave Brailsford at INEOS-controlled French side Nice (2023-24). It led Ajax of the Netherlands (2024-25) to make Farioli the first Italian coach in their history. Ajax, a club whose fundamentalist identity is arguably the clearest and best defined in Europe, appointed someone from a culture that opposes it. But Farioli is an outlier, existing outside the culture of Italian football.
Last summer, while Serie A slept on Farioli’s talent, Porto president Andre Villas-Boas was wide awake to it. A once precocious coach picked another coach who has stood out for his own precocity. It figured as another compliment to Farioli. After all, the record books still show Villas-Boas is the youngest manager to win a major UEFA competition. He was 33 when he won the league, cup and Europa League treble with Porto, his hometown club. Villas-Boas’ ambition, even then, was to, one day, run against Pinto da Costa and become club president, a dream he realised in 2024. As such, the dynamic between him and Farioli is unique. Game recognises game.
At Nice, Farioli took them from ninth in Ligue 1 the previous season to fifth. They went unbeaten in his first 13 games and were in the Champions League places at Christmas. Unfortunately, Nice didn’t invest to make it stick. INEOS was preoccupied with closing a deal for a minority stake in Manchester United.
At Ajax, Farioli oversaw a 22-point improvement. Much of the attention focused on the end of his only season in Amsterdam, where he established a seemingly unassailable lead in the Eredivisie. Ajax were nine points clear with five games to go. A first league title since Erik ten Hag’s last at the club (2021-22) seemed within grasp. Alas, PSV improbably overhauled them in the most psychodramatic circumstances. But Ajax should never have been in contention to begin with.
The club Farioli joined were in disarray, their structure unrecognisable from the one that almost reached the Champions League final in 2019. Edwin van der Sar, the long-time chief executive, had stepped down in summer 2023. Marc Overmars, his sporting director, had resigned the previous year in scandal. Farioli walked into a dugout that had churned through four coaches in one season, as Ajax limped to fifth with their worst points return since 1965 (based on three points for a win). A title, in his first year, would have been a minor miracle. He almost realised it.
Just take a look at where Ajax are now. Fourth, a full 20 points adrift of PSV. Instead of dwelling on what might have been, Farioli moved on, taking it all in his stride.
Francesco Farioli’s achievement at Ajax should not be underestimated (Olaf Kraak/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
At Porto, he has led another title challenge.
As with Ajax, a casual glance might lead you to think that’s nothing remarkable, given the club’s history. However, consider where Porto finished last season. Without Sergio Conceicao and Mehdi Taremi, they were a speck in the mirror of the two Lisbon giants. Champions Sporting CP finished 11 points ahead and won another championship in Ruben Amorim’s absence. Three in five years marked Sporting out as the team of this decade in Portugal and as their unexpected run to this season’s Champions League quarter-finals suggests, dethroning Rui Borges’ lot is easier said than done.
Even so, this season, Porto looked like they would match Villas-Boas’ undefeated league campaign until Casa Pia caused an upset against 10 men in February. They took 49 points from 51 in the first half of the campaign. The pace Farioli and his players set has been hard for Sporting and Benfica to match. Both trail Porto by seven points. Sporting, it should be recognised, do still have a game-in-hand.
By winning their first nine games across all competitions, Farioli laid a marker down. To say he has made a better impression than the previous Italian to coach Porto, Luigi Delneri (who lasted just weeks in summer 2004 as Jose Mourinho’s successor and never took charge of an official game), is an understatement. Perfectly in sync with Villas-Boas, a new era at Porto has begun in earnest.
At the city’s world-famous Lello bookstore in January, the two not only showed they were on the same page, but they also signed a new contract, as Farioli and Villas-Boas shook hands on an extension until 2028. Having departed Nice and Ajax after a single season each to broaden his horizons and add to his experience, Farioli will not be one-and-done in Porto. He believes in this project.
The club backed him in the winter transfer window by bringing hugely experienced Brazilian centre-back Thiago Silva back to European football.
Porto have clearly become an attractive proposition again under Villas-Boas and Farioli.
Take Jakub Kiwior’s loan from Arsenal last summer. The Poland international defender did not lack offers after making 44 Premier League appearances. As with Silva, Serie A clubs presented him with the chance to return to Italy. But he chose Porto and his partnership with compatriot Jan Bednarek, another player with considerable Premier League experience after eight years at Southampton, has proven ironclad. Behind them, the captain Diogo Costa is, in Farioli’s opinion, “one of the best three goalkeepers in the world”.
Porto have conceded only seven goals from open play in the league, striking the right balance in approach between allowing the fewest touches in their own box and making the most tackles in the final third.
Less rough and ready than the Conceicao era’s bruisers, it is nevertheless a physical and athletic team. Victor Froholdt can play box-to-box. Pablo Rosario, a midfielder Farioli knew from Nice, can perform multiple roles. Samu Omorodion, the star striker, has improved at coming short, linking the play and operating with his back to goal. When he tore an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) against Sporting in February, it did not slow Porto’s title bid.
Farioli has coped well with the ebbs and flows of this season. When Borja Sainz’s form dropped off, 17-year-old Oskar Pietuszewski, an inspired winter signing from Polish club Jagiellonia Bialystok, picked up the slack. He has replaced some of the missing goals (Samu had already hit 20), while Deniz Gul and Terem Moffi, another former Farioli pupil borrowed from Nice, have done the other chores the talented Spaniard performed for the team.
Despite maybe not being quite as entertaining as Sporting, even with Gabri Veiga or Rodrigo Mora between the lines, there is innovation and excitement in Farioli’s work.
He has a WhatsApp group called the “Creators’ Lab”, and it acts like a research and development department. A set of analysts independent from his coaching staff monitor what’s happening in other leagues, sharing trends and ideas he can then study, incorporate and elaborate on.
Italy’s loss is, for now, Portugal’s gain. Farioli continues to flourish further afield.