At 30, the youngest coach in the four divisions of the Brasileirão is inspired by Mourinho’s mentor

Luan Carlos was just 22 years old when he first took the bench as a professional football coach.

Physical trainer for Novo Horizonte, a small team from Ipameri, a municipality of 27,000 inhabitants in the interior of Goiás, he was hastily summoned to replace coach Filinto Holanda, who had left the club. Surprised by beating América-GO by 1 to 0.

A week later, he repeated the same score against Itaberaí-GO, but ended up being passed over by another coach, 27 years older. Even so, the opportunity was like a milestone for him.

“I saw there that I could really be a professional coach. It was something I had fed every day since I was 14 years old”, he tells Sheet.

Seven years after the 2015 episode, on May 16, the coach took over Brusque-SC as the youngest among all 124 who compete in the four main national divisions – 60 of them in series A, B and C and another 64 in the D

In Serie B, where the club from Santa Catarina occupies the 12th place, Bruno Pivetti, 38, from Tombense-MG, is the closest to Luan. He is 43 years younger than Felipão, the most experienced of the elite at 73.

“It was a unique opportunity, I couldn’t refuse. Getting to Serie B at that age wasn’t even in my best plans”, he explains.

At the club, the coach manages at least 15 players older than him. The list includes well-known names, such as defender Wallace, 34, ex-Corinthians and Flamengo, right-back Pará, 36, ex-Santos, Flamengo and Grêmio, and midfielder Guilherme, 33, ex-Atlético-MG, Corinthians and cruise

“I see my situation as a motivation for other people who were not players or were born in the middle. The coach who was a player has something that I will never have, so I need to fill it somehow. I have a limitation and I need to reduce it, so I seek a lot of knowledge”, he adds.

Luan had already directed teams in Série D. He debuted in 2019 for Atlético-CE and, in the following two years, he played for Goianésia-GO and Brasiliense-DF. He started the current competition for Caxias-RS, but reached the biggest stage of his career so far.

The obsession with becoming a coach started early and was best understood at age 15, after a serious knee injury. Unable to continue playing, he decided to open a football school, while reconciling the role of wardrobe assistant in Novo Horizonte.

During the period, a conversation with his mother exposed him to the uncomfortable and surprising truth about who his father was that he did not know until then: the former defender and also coach Paulo Marcos, who played for Internacional in the 1970s and commanded several teams in the country.

“For me it was shocking and impressive, but it all started to make sense. My family had no involvement with football and I had a connection that I didn’t understand. Today we have a good relationship, it’s not a relationship between father and son, but we cultivate a good friendship”, he says.

The early career was forged in the classroom. He entered the physical education course at 16, at UFG (Federal University of Goiás). The first chance on the bench was in Novo Horizonte, but the transformation took place when he arrived at Uniclinic, currently Atlético-CE, a club leased by the company of striker Ari, who played for the entire last decade in Russian football for teams such as Spartak Moscow, Krasnodar and Lokomotiv Moscow.

“It was an incredible opportunity, I’m very grateful. [Ari] took me to internships at Benfica, Sporting and Russia. I also managed to take a course at UEFA and, above all, I immersed myself a lot in what is written in Portugal”, he says.

Two names began to exert enormous influence on his ideas, the main one being the Portuguese professor and philosopher Manuel Sérgio Vieira, considered one of the main mentors of José Mourinho and Jorge Jesus. The other name is Júlio Garganta, professor at the University of Porto and respected sports scholar.

“Everything I research and study made me see that theory only makes sense if practice is determined. It needs to be grounded in practical actions, to be accessible”, he says.

It was at the Ceará club that Luan understood that he could go further in his career by overcoming Rogério Ceni’s Fortaleza in Castelão. After conceding a goal just 20 seconds into the match, he turned it around in the first half. Ceni went to the dressing room to understand the young coach’s feat.

“It was remarkable because he told me that being a leader as a player was different from being a leader as a coach, that studying the game was fundamental. He wanted to understand how I managed to win, how we managed to predict certain plays”, he says.

A scholar, Luan Carlos says he has read biographies of technicians such as Jürgen Klopp, Carlo Ancelotti, Pep Guardiola, Marcelo Bielsa, Carlos Carvalhal, Abel Ferreira, as well as scientific studies. He also did postgraduate studies in exercise physiology and sport psychology.

“In Portugal there are many coaches coming from the academic world, who are not athletes. Knowledge can indeed open many doors”.

Despite the meteoric start, he even stopped playing football and returned to his own city in 2018 to be close to his aunt, who died of complications from cancer later that year.

“We didn’t just move forward. I came back home, I still managed the team in my city and gained access to the first division. That was great, of course, but seeing her in the stands and being next to her was my greatest gift. There’s no reason to be professionally blind,” he says.

“I don’t know how long I’ll stay in football, but I want to do everything with intensity. I’m not afraid, young age will never be pressure”, he concludes.​

In his debut for the new club, Luan beat Tombense-MG at home by 1-0.