Athletico 100 years: Paulo Autuori, the reformer

After a few years of political turmoil and heavy investment in bricks, Athletico seemed unaccustomed to winning at the end of 2015. The last local title had been won six years earlier and, despite the memory of the good year of 2013, within the club the feeling was that 2016 would be the first year of the rest of Athletico’s life.

It started with the right call Paulo Autuori de Mello to be the coach. The Rio native is the most up-to-date coach of his generation in contemporary football.

Citizen of the world, we never know if he is in Bulgaria, Peru or Portugal, where he started working at a very young age in the 1980s. When he appeared in Brazil, he was Brazilian and Libertadores champion in two years, a competition he won again in 2005 , facing CAP in the infamous end of the escape.

Autuori arrived at Athletico to reformulate the football department and implement the club’s own way of playing, valuing possession of the ball, more in tune with the football played around the world. There is a generation of coaches who have him as an example, because in addition to his winning mentality, Autuori has enough class to make a point without humiliating anyone.

In two months, his team defeated Paranaense in the best possible way: a 5-0 aggregate score against the local rival. In the Brasileirão, sixth place was worth a return to the Libertadores.

From then on, a key changed at CAP. We started to believe that it was possible to compete for titles again, even if part of the fans did not agree that to play in international competitions it was necessary to “know how to suffer”, as the coach preached. For the crowd, the opponent is the one who has to suffer, but Autuori had some reason in his private gospel.

The sequence of that season was also the first of many times in which Autuori delegated technical command to someone, as he preferred to be in the role of technical director of the club. He never really worked out. When he returned, at the height of the pandemic in 2020, he managed to get the team back on track and save it from relegation, but he also didn’t want to stay as coach.

Among the many bets, he chose Alberto Valentim and, in the end, the project for the second South American championship in 2021 was a success, as, in fact, were his visits here. Whenever he left, Autuori left a better club than he found when he arrived.