Wolves’ manager spent a lot of time on the fringes as a goalkeeper but making his mind work harder than his hands has paid off with an FA Cup semi-final against Watford

The most influential voices usually come from the dugout – and in more ways than one with Nuno Espírito Santo. A second-choice goalkeeper for a large chunk of his playing career, Nuno’s sage observations from the substitutes’ bench, or in a corner of the dressing room that José Mourinho entrusted him to police at Porto, made him a manager in waiting.

“I’ve always seen Nuno as a born leader,” Derlei, the Brazilian forward who played with Nuno for Porto and Dynamo Moscow, says. “It’s normal someone like that wants to be a coach. He worked with great managers from whom he learned and then shaped his style. And he’s very intelligent, a high IQ. You just have to look at the size of his head!”

Derlei laughs after that last comment but there is a serious point, illustrated by his memory of Porto’s first European triumph under Mourinho. Nuno was an unused substitute when Derlei scored twice to help Porto beat Celtic in extra time in 2003. “In that Uefa Cup final, even from the outside, Nuno was one of the most helpful,” Derlei says. “Leaders don’t need to be on the field. A few words are enough when necessary. And when someone needed that, he was there.”

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Nuno is still there, only these days he no longer operates in the shadows and his work is appreciated by a wider audience, in particular those decked out in the old gold shirts of Wolves. “Nuno had a dream” goes the song that will reverberate around Wembley on Sunday, when the 45-year-old leads Wolves into an FA Cup semi-final against Watford.

Appointed at Molineux in the summer of 2017, 12 months after Wolves were taken over by the ambitious Chinese conglomerate Fosun, Nuno’s first season ended with Wolves running away with the Championship and the second has featured memorable victories over Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester United (twice).

Born on the island of São Tomé and Príncipe, Nuno is a fascinating and complex character. He can be charismatic one minute and hard work the next. Although the Wolves players have seen a lighter side, as anyone who has watched the footage of his reaction to being stitched up with an exploding golf ball on a course in Marbella last year will testify, Nuno rarely lets his guard down publicly. Small talk is not his thing, especially with the media. A post-match cigarette is followed by answers that are short and rarely sweet.

Nuno’s priorities are elsewhere. There is a feeling he invests every ounce of his energy – emotional and physical – in his work. “Really intense” is Diogo Jota’s description of a manager whose hands-on approach on the training ground extends to giving fringe players his full attention. “With managers that we’ve had here before, the players that didn’t play would train and the manager wouldn’t go out to watch that session, but he’s there taking it,” Matt Doherty says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nuno does not need to shout. ‘With his size he just needs to open his eyes a little more,’ says one of his former players. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

Nuno’s presence alone would be enough to raise the standard. Bearded and brooding, the Portuguese cuts an imposing figure and it is easy to picture the scene that one of the Rio Ave players describes when asked whether Nuno, who took his first job in management with the Primeira Liga club, shouted in the dressing room. “It wasn’t necessary most of the time. We just had to look at him,” Ukra says. “With all that size, he just needed to open his eyes a little more.”

Rio Ave was the beginning of a new chapter for Nuno after a playing career that included spells in Portugal, Spain, Greece and Russia. His move from Vitória Guimarães to Deportivo La Coruña in 1997 was a gamechanger. Not so much for Nuno, who started four league matches for Deportivo in five years, but certainly for the man who completed his first transfer deal. The agent’s name was Jorge Mendes.

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While Mendes would go on to become the most powerful football agent in the world, Nuno’s goalkeeping career was a slow burn and there were times at Deportivo when his mind seemed to be working harder than his hands. “From a tactical level, you could see he was slightly different to other players,” says Dani Mallo, a young goalkeeper who was coming through at Deportivo when Nuno joined. “It wasn’t enough for him to turn up, train, go home and be happy with that. He would be one of those who would say: ‘Wouldn’t it be better if that player went there? Why are we playing three at the back?’

“But the thing that most struck me about him was the personality, the confidence in himself. He was always aware of how good he was. And given the situation he was in, that wasn’t so easy. I was very young and I was a goalkeeper who wasn’t playing and I would look at him and think: ‘I wish I had that.’ I was almost jealous that he knew he was good.”

That assurance is there in his management and manifests itself in all sorts of ways, whether converting Conor Coady into a centre-half in his first training session at Wolves without holding a conversation first, or staying calm after the five defeats in six matches this season that exposed a weakness in his 3-4-3 formation. Nuno responded by sacrificing some attacking width, introducing another midfielder and playing two up front, and Wolves have never looked back.

It is tempting to think all the time spent on the bench as a goalkeeper has been more a help than a hindrance to his managerial career. After all Nuno had the best seat in the house when it came to watching how a manager operated. In the case of Mourinho, Nuno admired the way the Porto manager convinced his players they “were going to succeed, [even] fighting against giants”, and there are shades of that in his approach at Wolves.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nuno’s transformation of Wolves has made him a great favourite with fans. Photograph: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images

After the opening match this season Nuno called a meeting and told the Wolves players they needed to relax, have more self-belief and stop treating Premier League opponents like superheroes. The message soon got through. Wolves went toe to toe with Manchester City in the next home game and collected the first of 13 points against the top six.

A tight inner circle surrounds Nuno with a heavy Portuguese influence, yet intriguingly there is a 32-year-old Scot among them. Ian Cathro first crossed paths with Nuno at Largs, in Scotland, on a coaching course in 2009. They quickly struck up a rapport and went on to work together at Rio Ave, Valencia and now Wolves. They are bright minds with big ideas.

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“Their training sessions were very good,” Ukra says, recalling his time under them at Rio Ave, who reached two cup finals during that period. “Nuno worked defensive aspects a lot. We even had an exercise in which he asked us to make deep passes to the corner flag zone, and then defenders had to gain position and protect the ball until an offensive foul was committed [to kill the attacking press]. He also required a lot of attention to one-two passes. He used to get furious when someone stood still.”

Nuno says his philosophy is underpinned by the belief that “the defensive process can take care of the game”. If that sounds a little negative, it could not be further from the truth. For Nuno, who wants an exciting brand of attacking football, it is about seizing the initiative defensively, which means stealing possession in areas that leave opponents unbalanced and exposed.

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That fast, aggressive style worked superbly in his first season at Valencia and culminated in fourth place, yet everything unravelled early in his second campaign amid a chaotic backdrop. Nuno then had a stint in charge of Porto but left at the end of his first season, after finishing league runners-up.

In many ways his decision to come to England next came as no surprise. Managing in the Premier League was a long-held ambition and, with Fosun owning a stake in Mendes’s company, Gestifute, and using the agent as an adviser, everything fell into place at Wolves for Nuno to become what he was as a player – the leader of the pack.

Additional reporting by Nuno Travassos and Sid Lowe