Coaching friends reunited in Botafogo-Palmeiras showdown

SE Palmeiras and Botafogo face each other this Saturday in a bid to reach the quarter-finals of the FIFA Club World Cup 2025™. The all-Brazilian clash at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia is already special because of what’s at stake.

But there is something that makes it even more mouthwatering, particularly for Abel Ferreira and Renato Paiva. For the two Portuguese coaches, it will, in some ways, feel like everything has led to this moment. After all, Ferreira and Paiva share more than just a nationality. They’ve been close friends for years.

That friendship brought the rivals together during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to analyse the game on video calls, often joined by fellow coaches like Nuno Campos, a former assistant at AS Roma, Shakhtar Donetsk and FC Porto. It became a way to pass the time during lockdowns when leaving the house wasn't an option, but it also served as a platform to share knowledge and develop together.

There is no doubt it paid off. Ferreira and Paiva are now preparing for one of the most eagerly-anticipated encounters in the biggest club tournament in history.

Back then, Ferreira was managing PAOK FC in Greece, while Paiva was coaching in the youth ranks at SL Benfica. Along with Nuno, they’d talk football nearly every day from 2pm until 7pm.

"Being a coach is like an addiction. So, for example, during the pandemic, when everything shut down in March, Abel, Nuno and I would spend entire afternoons on Zoom discussing training sessions and matches, using a miniature pitch and moving pieces around," Paiva told CONMEBOL in an interview. "We couldn’t leave the house, so we shared ideas there. We'd keep going until one of us would notice it was suddenly 7pm and our families had been waiting for us to have dinner."

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Campos recalls those afternoons with his two friends with a touch of nostalgia. "I was in Rome at the time and we spent wonderful afternoons filling up our free time, of which there was plenty, since we were all stuck at home and couldn't go out," said Campos, who served as Paiva's assistant at Toluca in Mexico and recently took charge at Zalaegerszeg in Hungary, in an interview with FIFA.

"It was a conversation among friends, but friends who are coaches, and because of the nature of our work, a lot of the time we ended up talking about the finer points of the game. It's funny to think that all these years later, the two guys who used to join me on Zoom to talk about tactics are going to play each other in a knockout match at the biggest club competition in the world.

"Sometimes, fate puts us in incredible situations that we could never have imagined. Whatever happens, it's going to be a great game of football between two great teams, managed by two great coaches. It’s going to be beautiful."

With the recent wave of Portuguese coaches making their mark in Brazil, especially after Jorge Jesus’ success with CR Flamengo in 2019, the number of professionals crossing the Atlantic continues to grow. At the start of the current Brazilian league season, there were five in total.

Ferreira, the longest-serving Palmeiras manager in one single spell, has been at the Estadio Palestra Italia since 2020, while Paiva previously worked at Bahia before taking over at Botafogo this year.

Given how close the two are, it’s only natural that they share notes about opponents whenever they can. That was the case in 2021 when Paiva, then managing Independiente del Valle in Ecuador, was preparing to face Gremio FBPA in the CONMEBOL Libertadores.

Ferreira had just seen off the Porto Alegre side in the Copa do Brasil and gave his compatriot some advice on their upcoming opponent. It worked: Del Valle knocked out the Brazilians and advanced in the competition.

"With Abel, I can jump on a video call and have a tactics board in the background," Paiva said. "On that occasion, he helped me out with some useful information about Gremio."

It won't be like that this time around, but when they greet each other this weekend in Philadelphia, memories will surely come flooding back of those endless afternoons spent on Zoom, discussing football between friends.