Paulo Fonseca interview: ‘This type of game is not for weak players’

European football is closed for winter. The stadiums are empty and the training pitches are dusted with snow. But in northern France, with a tactics board over his shoulder and red and blue counters plotting his next move, Lille head coach Paulo Fonseca is ready for the game to return.

And why not? Fonseca, 50, is in his second season at Lille (LOSC) and his side are playing some of the most watchable attacking football in Ligue 1. LOSC were fifth at the turn of the year, spent almost three months unbeaten, and have qualified for the knockout stages of the Europa Conference League. They have defeated Monaco. They held Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain.

This is the fourth country in which Fonseca has coached. After leaving Portugal in 2016, he restored Shakhtar Donetsk to the top of Ukrainian football, building a team admired across Europe, before then experiencing the crosswinds of life at Roma. One good season, one less so. After leaving Italy, he was ensnared by Tottenham’s chaotic coaching search during the summer of 2021. The following year, Fonseca, his wife, Katerina, and their young child fled Kyiv in the early hours of a February morning, escaping the Ukrainian capital as Russian bombing devastated the city.

Then in 2022, he arrived in Lille. They had won the Ligue 1 title in 2021 but plunged into mid-table immediately after.

Fonseca was the response. For him, it was an opportunity on his terms.

“The main thing in my conversation with the club was the feeling that I would be able to build something that was mine. That’s what made me decide to come to Lille. They had been champions two years before, but most of the players (from that side) had left. The owner wanted to build a new team with young players and no pressure. He wanted a new way of playing and a team that could dominate games. Immediately I had the feeling: ‘Yes, this is the place. I can build an identity here’.”

Fonseca led LOSC to fifth place and the Europa Conference League during his first season. In the process, he set a club record of 22 consecutive home games without defeat, developing one of the most attractive teams in France along the way. And that mattered because aesthetics are precious to him.

“For me, it’s never just about the result. It’s about the process. What we create and the way we create it. This is very important for me. I want to create something that allows you to enjoy the game. And to do that, you need to have an attacking way of playing. You have to try to dominate and create more chances than the opposition.

“I think today people appreciate less the coaches who don’t have courage. I want to create something spectacular. Something for people to really enjoy.”

Most often, they do. Fonseca teaches a bold possession game, full of verve. His football is built on daring exits from defence and clever numerical advantages constructed in midfield. His LOSC want to bait their opponents. They want to draw the teams they play into the middle of the pitch, lure them with intricate passing, before fanning out and exploiting the space.

“Our game is attraction,” Fonseca says. “We want teams to press us so that we can find space. And so we take many risks. Especially when we build up because our first phase — with our different structures and how we accelerate and decelerate the game — is what allows us to dominate.”

Bold football brings rewards, but sometimes there is a price for taking risks. At times during his career, that has been a criticism, but Fonseca does not believe in scared football. In fact, he believes it is an obstacle to what LOSC are trying to achieve.

“We’ll fail sometimes,” he says. “Of course.

“We are not the biggest club in France. We do not have the same capacity as some of the other clubs. But we can be strong if we choose the right players and if we can build a team with courage.”

LOSC have only the sixth-largest wage bill in Ligue 1. Paris Saint-German spend nearly six times as much. Marseille three times. Monaco more than double. There is also a significant financial gap to Rennes and Lyon.

Fonseca and his club agree that courageous football is the way to punch above their weight. The cost, however, is putting players in positions where they might make mistakes. In the present day, when any errors draw social media savagery, that can be a tough proposition.

“This type of game is not for weak players,” Fonseca accepts.

“The players have to know they will make mistakes, but I always insist they try. They know they can fail, but only within the intentions of the team. If it goes wrong, then it’s my fault.

“I’ll say that to the media: ‘I’m guilty here, not them.’ I’m asking my players to take these risks.”

He is asking supporters to understand them, too, and to appreciate the broader aims. Fonseca does not want a stadium of quiet, angsty fidgeters.

“It’s important to really make the people understand our style of play. Here in Lille, people understood very quickly what we were trying. When everybody believes, I think that most of the time they don’t think about mistakes. The players take risks without being afraid to fail.”

Character, courage, fearlessness. Fonseca demands these qualities but — in keeping with the club’s vision — from an extremely young side. Canadian forward Jonathan David and former Manchester United prospect Angel Gomes are 23, goalkeeper Lucas Chevalier is 22 and full-back Tiago Santos is 21. Centre-back Leny Yoro, who is as good a defensive prospect as there is anywhere in Europe, is 18.

Fonseca lights up with pride when he talks of Yoro, a stylish footballer who is the image of the modern defender.

“He’s amazing. In all my career, I’ve never seen such a mature young player.”

Fonseca gave senior debuts to, among others, Diogo Jota (at Pacos Ferreira), Mykhailo Mudryk (at Shakhtar Donetsk) and Carlos Baleba (LOSC, recently sold to Brighton), so he has been around plenty of potential; in the years to come, Yoro will surely have a career to watch.

Asked about his favourite part of his job, Fonseca does not hesitate. He enjoys match days and being on the touchline, but the training pitch is where he would always rather be.

“I’m not the kind of coach who believes that the games improve players. No, it’s the work. The daily work. When we get the time, I love the sessions, the exercises and the teaching on the pitch.”

Dressed as Zorro after Shakhtar defeated Manchester City in the Champions League (Stanislav Vedmid/AFP via Getty Images)

Increasingly, that is a privilege. Lille’s continued participation in Europe will keep them in a Thursday-Sunday routine for, they hope, much of the rest of the season, with days on the training pitch increasingly scarce.

“It’s true, we’re always getting less time, but I’m having such a good time with these players and this team. From when I arrived, the players were so open to playing my game and it was amazing to feel how much the players were willing to believe in that approach.”

He takes pride, too, in what he describes as players “growing with the ideas of the team”. LOSC have become a hothouse of sorts, full of players of similar profiles, incubated by the team’s chemistry and all progressing in the right direction.

Edon Zhegrova has benefited. A left-footed right winger, the Kosovan has grown much more efficient under Fonseca. Alexsandro Ribeiro, who often partners Yoro in the middle of a defence that is statistically Ligue 1’s third-meanest, was playing in the Portuguese second division 18 months ago. Bafode Diakite, 22, joined from Toulouse for €3million (£2.6m; $3.3m) in the summer of 2022, but his value has risen exponentially after strong performances in different defensive roles.

Clearly, much is going right at LOSC. The recruitment has been excellent and a youth academy which helped to produce Eden Hazard, Franck Ribery, Yohan Cabaye and Benjamin Pavard remains prolific. Fonseca’s work is helping the club capitalise on its strengths. Part of that involves empowering players.

“He is a bit similar to Thomas Tuchel,” Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who played for Fonseca at Roma, told The Athletic in 2021. “He tries to put the players in the best positions to allow them to play their own style of game freely.”

Fonseca describes his period in Rome as an awakening of sorts.

“It was a difficult experience, but I enjoyed it so much,” he says. “The passion of the Italians is amazing. You have radio stations that talk about football for 24 hours. All the newspapers, too. It was a huge pressure, but I loved it.

(Paolo Bruno/Getty Images)

“I grew a lot there. Every country has different ideas about the game and in a lot of them, many coaches believe in the same things. In Portugal, for instance, we were really influenced by tactical periodisation and by Vitor Frade (the Porto academic credited with founding the theory). But in Italy, I saw so many different types of football and had to adapt so often, to pure man-to-man, for instance, like (Atalanta head coach Gian Piero) Gasperini. You don’t really get that in England or Germany. Brighton and Manchester City, maybe, and some teams do it during moments of the game, like at goal kicks, but all the time – no.

“Italy is so tactically rich like that.”

Fonseca managed Roma during the Covid-19 shutdown and recovery and then through a change in the club’s ownership. He is reflective about his two seasons there, conceding that he made too many tactical compromises. During the 2020-21 campaign, his last, he and his squad were not quite suited to one another, he believes. That the club chose Jose Mourinho and his pragmatism to succeed him suggests he was right.

But Fonseca really comes to life when talking about the differences in footballing culture he has encountered and how they have altered his thinking. One of the adaptions he has made has been in how he uses his 4-2-3-1 formation to attack. In Ukraine, Shakhtar’s comparative strength allowed him to use both full-backs, usually Darjo Srna and Ismaily, high up the pitch, really as wingers. Ismaily, who is in his thirties now, is with Fonseca again in Lille, but in a modified system.

“Here we still attack with five players, but we find them from different parts of the team and often just use one full-back pushed higher. So, we might only give Ismaily (on the left) more freedom to be offensive and block the right-back from going forward. Why? Well, because Edon (Zhegrova, the right winger) doesn’t have the right characteristics to play infield (inside an attacking full-back) and also because we have to prepare for the moment when we lose possession.

“In Ukraine, the teams didn’t create that many problems, so it was OK to take risks and push players forward. Here? No. The game has a lot of transitions.

“It was the same in Italy, where you have to be really careful. There are so many teams who play in a low block and wait for the opportunity to counter-attack. You have to prepare well for that moment.”

Another difference he has encountered in France is a change in the way opponents approach his team.

“In the first year, we had the right conditions to play our game.

“Most of the teams would press us, which is what we wanted, but this year they have started to defend much deeper, much more in a low block. OK, when we play against Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain, they still press us, but many others are using a low block.

“So the game is not as it was last year. It is a big difference and gives you another solution to find and sometimes this year our team has had difficulties with this. Not just us. I see a lot of games in England and when teams play with 10 players in their box, it’s even difficult for Manchester City. When we play this kind of game, the talent of the players and what they can do one-on-one is so important. You need a lot of individual ability.”

Fonseca has to devise ways to deal with some of the world’s best players (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

The hope is that the freedom Fonseca affords talent allows LOSC to keep evolving and forcing other teams to adapt.

He is an avid football watcher and knows what he likes. He speaks of his admiration for all sorts of teams. Gasperini’s Atalanta. Roberto De Zerbi’s Sassuolo of the past and his Brighton side of the present. He talks of the work Igor Tudor did last year at Marseille and of an enduring affection for Pep Guardiola’s great Barcelona teams.

But his eyes really dance when he speaks of the riddles that football poses. How to find a new way out of defence. How to tease a docile opponent forward. Or just how to make a player forget their fear.

“I love the game,” he says, meaning it.

“I love my job.”

(Top photo: Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)