Ian Cathro in his own words | OneFootball

“I really want the people who come to watch Estoril to enjoy the game.” Ian Cathro, Estoril Praia coach, 19 February 2025. Nothing could be simpler. Or maybe not. As football fans all over the world know, that is easier said than done.

But for Cathro, Estoril’s Scottish manager, it was mission accomplished as he guided the Canarinhos to a highly positive campaign playing some of the most entertaining football on display in Liga Portugal in 2024/25.

This was one of Cathro’s responses, delivered in perfect Portuguese, in a revealing interview given in mid-season to the brilliant “No Princípio Era A Bola” podcast.

PortuGOAL translates and transcribes the best parts of an interview which helps us get to know a coach who is on the up.

Rio Ave (2012-2014, as Nuno Espírito Santo’s assistant)

“They were two super important years for me, both as a professional and as a person. It was the first time I’d left home. It was something I really wanted to do. I knew that if I wanted to grow as a coach I had to test myself in a different context.

“For all the difficulties I faced, I had lots of help, especially from Nuno, the rest of the coaching staff – who remain great friends of mine – and also the players. I think they felt here’s someone who is showing great effort to at least try and speak Portuguese, try and learn, and try to do everything he can to help the cause.”

Newcastle (2015/16, as Rafa Benítez’s assistant)

“I took many things from working with Rafa but one thing especially stuck with me. He told me: ‘When I started out as a coach I had a thousand ideas. By the time I became Valencia coach I had a hundred ideas. Now I have ten ideas.’

“It’s better to work with fewer ideas, but to develop them better. I like to work alongside the players, to listen to them. This kind of focus gives you more time and allows you to do that. What gives me the most pleasure is to achieve success as a joint effort. Although obviously the final decision is down to me.”

Hearts (2016/17, as head coach)

“I feel like saying ‘thank you’ for everything they did to complicate my life at the time, because it forced me to grow as a coach more quickly than normal. It helped me a lot. So it was a very important experience.

“But I consider my first true job as a head coach this one, at Estoril Praia. I look back at my spell at Hearts as a kind of apprenticeship.”

Overriding goal

“I want to help every player improve every day. That’s easy to say, but it’s very, very difficult to pull off. The goal is to work on each player’s strong points and make them improve them even more, but also to work on improving the weaker part of their game.”

Attacking philosophy

“I’ll never be a manager who hands the initiative to the other team. I want to have our batteries pointed at their goal. The players too, like playing that way, and it gives them more energy. I really want the people who come to watch Estoril to enjoy the game. That’s very important for me.”

Pride and Portugal

“It’s a source of pride for me to have the opportunity to work here in Portugal. I wanted to try and build a bit of a different career, and I know it’s out of the ordinary to have a British coach working in this league, but it was something I really wanted to do.

“After the two years I spent at Rio Ave, I always paid attention to Portuguese football and I have friends in the game here, and I was working as part of a Portuguese coaching team wherever we went. All my football friends are Portuguese.”

A different Estoril

“My principal idea is to create and more competitive, more stable Estoril, and I want to erase from dictionary of the club the word manutenção (survival in the top flight) as being the goal. That was what I asked the players in the changing room on Day One – not to use that word.

“With time, all of us in the structure of the club have got to know one another better, the way we work, our dynamics, and I believe we all feel we are now more prepared to look to the future with optimism.”

Portuguese footballers’ intelligence

“I admire Portuguese football and Portuguese footballers. When I worked in the English Premier League, we always had Portuguese players. I think their understanding of the game, their intelligence, and the capacity to merge the technical quality together with this intelligence and understanding of the game is extremely advanced in Portuguese football.”

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