Santos target, Condé should stay at Vitória – 12/15/2023 – Sport

Léo Condé, 45, never forgot May 3, 2015. Undefeated finalist with Caldense in the Minas Gerais Championship that year, the young coach saw a state title slip through his fingers that seemed certain.

And it was bitter: with a goal from Jô, from Atlético-MG, in an irregular position, in the final minutes of the decision in Varginha. The move and the date marked him forever.

“I’m at the 17th club of my career, but I’ve never forgotten [daquele dia]. The way we lost hurt me a lot,” he recalls. Sheet.

Just over eight years after that game, the Minas Gerais coach was finally able to make the unlikely happen.

He led Vitória to the unprecedented 2023 Series B title — the first national trophy in the club’s 124-year history, just one year after accession from Series C.

The achievement made the coach one of the names considered by the new Santos board after the failure of negotiations with Thiago Carpini, from Juventude. The attack comes up against the recent contract renewal, approved between him and the Bahian club last week. The São Paulo club’s favorite name is Fábio Carille.

“It was a marriage that worked. After Caldense, I believe it was the work that allowed me to establish my identity, to make people look at me differently again”, he analyzes.

Condé started 2023 very different from the way he ended the previous year. At the time, he spent three months without a club even after a solid campaign with Sampaio Corrêa, where he finished Series B in fifth place, four points away from promotion.

He only took over the Bahian team in February in a scenario similar to that of Santos, almost apocalyptic. The team accumulated series of failures.

Vitória was eliminated in the first stages of the Campeonato Baiano, the Copa do Nordeste and the Copa do Brasil. The coach, in turn, did not win any of the first seven games – he recorded three defeats and four draws.

He won a vote of confidence from the board and used an “interseason” forced by the lack of competitions to adjust the team to his mold. The tactic worked

“I arrived at a very turbulent time, with a change of command [de treinador] and seven games in just one month. We had almost 40 days to prepare. So, yes, I started putting my ideas forward and remodeled a good part of the team with the arrival of 12 athletes”, he says.

The renewed Vitória debuted in Série B, beating Ponte Preta 3-0 and enjoyed a run of five consecutive victories in the competition.

“We presented ourselves again playing well, in full Barradão, and this was a kind of recovery of confidence. The fans felt they could trust, and things started to work”, explains Condé.

Despite access the previous year, red and black fans had accumulated suffering since the fall of Série A in 2018. In the last five years, the club hired 144 players and had 17 coaches, in addition to three presidents. It was even threatened with falling to Series D.

Condé, in addition to the unprecedented title, still needed to counter difficult statistics. Since 2008, with Vagner Mancini, the association has not started and finished a national competition with the same commander.

“When Vitória came to me, I looked for the recent history and I was a little scared. But with this board, in the nine months of work, there was never a single month of late salaries. I feel a constant desire from everyone to improve the structure that stopped a little in time”, he reports.

After his praised work at Caldense, in 2015, the coach received invitations to become a permanent assistant for teams such as Atlético-MG and Cruzeiro. He embarked on a solo career as a coach, but never managed an elite team.

“I think that at my best moment I lacked a chance largely due to the success of Fábio Carille, at Corinthians, and the tendency of clubs to bet on home assistants such as Jair Ventura, Thiago Larghi and Eduardo Barroca”, he points out.

Despite his absence from Serie A clubs, he is proud of four titles in his career: two editions of the Campeonato Maranhense, in 2020 and 2022, the Alagoano, in 2017, and the Troféu do Interior, in 2021.

He also won two accessions, with Botafogo-PB, in 2018, and with Novorizontino, in 2021. Series B, now, places him again among the emerging coaches.

“I noticed technicians who always worked well, but who insisted on not being so good because they didn’t have significant titles. Achievements help to see you differently”, he explains.

Condé fulfilled the mission at Vitória that was incomplete at Caldense.

Interestingly, in the penultimate game of the competition, the cup presentation against Sport, with a packed Barradão, he met for the first time with assistant referee Guilherme Dias Camilo, responsible for the error that cost him the state title.

“He gave me a hug, he apologized. We forgave him, there was no VAR. And everything is really fine”, he concludes.

Now, he has everything he needs to do his first job in the national elite. With the past fully resolved and on honeymoon with the new fans.