Joao Sacramento was 18 years old when he left his hometown of Barcelos in northern Portugal to move to South Wales and pursue his dream of becoming a football manager, and little more than 10 years later he had achieved it – for seven games at least.

The Tottenham Hotspur assistant manager, appointed by Jose Mourinho when he took over in November, still has the best points-per-game average of any of Lille’s three managers during their 2017-2018 season; a trio that includes Marcelo Bielsa, sacked before Christmas. Sacramento managed Lille for six Ligue 1 games and one League Cup defeat up to the winter break, a run which included a win away at Lyon when the caretaker manager was still just 28.

Now 31, he is the latest of a coaching generation led by Mourinho who are students of the tactical periodisation model developed by the Portuguese professor Vitor Frade, whose ideas first took hold when the current Spurs manager studied coaching in Lisbon in the mid-1980s. They are both coaches who excelled academically and, as demonstrated by that famous clip from the Manchester City game of them sprinting from the bench to the fourth official, there is also a shared sense of football’s injustices.

Sacramento was a good student but he also took his opportunity to make the jump from lecturer at what was then the University of Glamorgan – now University of South Wales (USW) – by connecting with one of the more influential figures in Portuguese football.

That was Luis Campos, the sporting director of Lille, and a close ally of Mourinho for whom he worked at Real Madrid. Campos comes from near to Barcelos and it was to him that Sacramento sent his USW thesis for which he had been given access to the training and matchday data of a Premier League club. He also sent detailed reports on Real Madrid’s opposition and Campos was so impressed he invited him to the club, beginning Sacramento’s connection to those in football’s most powerful roles.