Nikola Popovic (Photo by atleticocploja.com)
At 51 years of age, Nikola Popović has already worked in 10 different countries, lived on four different continents, and spent the past two decades studying the game of football; earning his stripes as both assistant manager and head coach. And today, he has Atlético Clube de Portugal on track for promotion to Liga Portugal 2, one of the nation’s two professional leagues, after an impressive start that has seen them win eight of their first 14 regular season matches.
Born in the present-day Serbian capital of Belgrade, Popović headed west when he was just three years old after his father secured a new job in Portugal. Growing up in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, Popović was infected with football madness at an early age. His father, a journalist, would often invite Yugoslavian footballers to their house and bring his son to Benfica matches at the Estádio da Luz, including the second leg of the 1989/90 UEFA European Cup semifinals. He still remembers the 120,000 supporters packed to the brim watching with bated breath as Vata’s late equalizer saw Benfica fend off elimination and hold on for a penalty shootout win vs. Marseille, booking their ticket to the biggest match in European club soccer.
Popović is a fluent speaker of Portuguese, English, and Serbian, and he also boasts an intermediate understanding of Italian and French. And while the first 34 years of his life – at least those he can remember – were all spent in Portugal, he still feels “half-Portuguese, half-Serbian” and retains dual citizenship.
“As a kid, I’d root for both Portugal and Yugoslavia, and whenever they played each other, I’d root for a draw,” says Popović in an exclusive interview with RG.
A Change in Career
He plied his trade with provincial sides like Pinheiro de Loures and Agualva-Cacém in Portugal’s regional competitions before soon realizing that his long-term future wasn’t as a footballer, but as a coach. Popović went about acquiring every possible coaching badge, and eventually, he attained a UEFA PRO license from the Portuguese Football Federation, the highest license available. After graduating from university and taking a coaching course in London, Popović spent a year interning for head coach Rui Dias at Olivais e Moscavide in the Portuguese third tier, before being invited onto the technical staff as an assistant coach in 2006.
Following the completion of the 2006/07 campaign, Popović decided to head abroad and take his talents to OFC Vihren Sandanski in the Bulgarian top-flight, only to return to Portugal after three months and join second-tier Varzim S.C. He was no longer in his hometown of Lisbon, but in the northern beach resort city of Póvoa de Varzim, working for a club that has won six major titles in its history and spent 21 seasons in the Portuguese top division, that has produced future Portugal internationals like António Lima Pereira, Bruno Alves, Hélder Postiga and Salvador Agra, and that typically has at least 70% of the first-team squad composed of academy players. Popović was part of the technical staff that helped Varzim win the first-ever edition of the Liga Intercalar, a competition that lasted from 2007 to 2011 and that was used to incentivize Portuguese teams to provide lesser-used players, youth players, and players returning from injury with more minutes.
“As an assistant coach, you have to be able to understand very well what the head coach demands in terms of the style of play,” said Popović.
“As soon as you understand what he wants, it’s a lot easier to explain it to players and correct something that needs to be rectified. We have a lot of different departments in a coaching staff now. The future of football is a bigger staff and more specialized roles in different moments of the game and focusing on them in a specified way.”
“When you look at the number of goals that Arsenal are scoring from set-pieces this season, it shows you that having a set-piece coach who’s solely responsible for focusing on defending and attacking set-plays can be very useful for any team. As soon as they go up for a set-piece, you can tell that Arsenal believe they’re going to score, and this is very important for each team. They are a constant threat and are the best team in the world right now when it comes to attacking dead balls.”
A Move to Africa
After spending two years with the Lobos do Mar (Sea Wolves), Popović parted ways with Rui Dias and started collaborating with João Carlos Pires de Deus – now Jorge Jesus’ assistant at Turkish side Fenerbahçe – as Cape Verde’s assistant manager. For the first time in his life, Popović was going to be living in Africa. And for the first time in his life, he was going to be working in international football.
He spent a couple of months in the Portuguese-speaking country of Cape Verde, an archipelago located off the coast of West Africa that consists of 10 volcanic islands, before following João de Deus to AD Ceuta FC, one of the most peculiar football clubs on the planet. Located on the coast of North Africa, Ceuta lies alongside the boundary between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
However, despite being next-door neighbours with Morocco, Ceuta is a Spanish enclave and one of the European Union’s few special member state territories. For every single away match, Popović and his players would take the boat across the Mediterranean and play in Spain, before heading back to Africa.
Despite these uniquely challenging circumstances, Popović helped to steer Ceuta past Atlético Mancha Real, CD Guadalajara and Melilla, reaching the final phase of the 2010/11 Copa del Rey for the first time in Ceuta’s entire history. Their Cinderella story came to an end in the Round of 32 against what many believe to be the greatest club team of all time: Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. Barcelona won the first leg 2-0 before proceeding to thrash them 5-0 at Camp Nou courtesy of goals from Nolito, Gabriel Milito, Pedro Rodríguez, Bojan Krkić, and eight-time Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi.
“Watching Guardiola and being able to face off against his Barcelona team was incredible,” said Popović.
“He and José Mourinho are my two biggest inspirations as a manager. I prioritize a possession-oriented game and want control and domination, and I’ve been able to implement an enjoyable style of play and create a positive footballing model that works on the pitch. However, my teams need to know what to do without the ball as well.”
And that’s a style of play that Popović is committed to instilling wherever he goes; with dominant possession and aggressive reactionary defense at the root of his strategy.
Heading East To The Emirates
Whilst Barcelona would go on to win the UEFA Champions League and the LaLiga title as well as lose to Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey Final, Popović would end up deciding to leave Ceuta midway through the campaign and return to the Parva Liga, where he helped lead PSFC Chernomorets Burga to the Bulgarian Cup quarterfinals. He then moved to the United Arab Emirates, linking up with Mourinho’s former assistant Baltemar Brito at Al Dhafra for the 2011/12 season and guiding them to the third and final edition of the UAE Vice Presidents Cup, a cup competition held from 2009 and 2012.
“It’s a completely different culture, but I was very surprised because of the quality there and how much it is developing,” remarked Popović. “However, it’s very hot there, so you have to adapt your methodology to the way that the players live. You need to think about how you’re going to execute the training sessions when there’s so much heat, so we’d often train very late in the day. We wanted to implement our own ideas and methodology, but you always have to adapt. I’ve coached all around the world, and you cannot come to a new country with your ideas and think you’re not going to have to adapt to the culture. The best coaches are the ones who can find a way to adapt to a different environment and achieve consistent results.”
Stay tuned for Part Two next week.
Zach Lowy is a freelance football journalist who has written for leading outlets like FotMob, BetUS, Apuestas Deportivas, and who has appeared as a radio and television guest for BBC, SiriusXMFC, and various other platforms. After pursuing a global sports journalism degree at George Washington University, Zach has been able to tap into his multilingual background and interview major footballing figures in Spanish and Portuguese as well as operate the weekly podcast 'Zach Lowy's European Football Show' on BET Central.
