A biography for Nuno Espirito Santohasn’t been written yet.
“It's very hard to rank performances. It's very difficult, and it doesn't really matter if you rank performances.”
“I consider myself a happy person, yes.”
“I respect the people who work with me, and I respect the crowds in the stadiums - I just live the game and try to advise my players in the right moments. If that means I have to raise my arms and jump, I will raise my arms and jump if that is the best way to help them.”
“When you speak about Jose Mourinho, personally, he has an impact on me.”
“At Porto, under Jose Mourinho, we won everything with a fantastic group of football players. Mourinho built that. He made us succeed, won everything. This has a big impact.”
“You have to love your job.”
“Even when you are not having the ball, you have to stay consistent, organised, and that's what keeps you in the game.”
“This is the way I look at the future: day by day.”
“The beginning of everything is our defensive organisation. The clean sheet is always the first objective that we have in the game. Always.”
“All coaches say, 'We want to control the game. We want the ball. Blah, blah, blah, blah,' but it's impossible to have the ball all the time.”
“You have to be ready for anything and everything and accept everything the way things are.”
“What you have to become is really strong in what you do. That's the point of building a team. You don't know any other way - it would be absurd to do it any other way.”
“If you embrace a project that will require time and patience, then you need something to work on. So the first step of the project is to create an identity. If you don't have an identity, then today you want this player and tomorrow another one. If you have an idea and a shape, then this is how you develop an identity.”
“The barrier of communication is terrible if you don't speak the language. You cannot reach a player with a translator.”