Ex Scotland coach Austin MacPhee set for Cristiano Ronaldo link-up as he joins Portugal staff
Austin MacPhee, who recently joined Portugal’s coaching team, will collaborate with Cristiano Ronaldo on set pieces.
After serving as a coach at Hearts, the 45-year-old joined Scotland as an assistant in 2021 and took over as set-piece coach at Aston Villa. He had previously worked for the Northern Ireland national team. However, as his father struggled with illness, MacPhee reluctantly decided to leave the international arena, stating that he wanted to focus on his club job when Villa qualified for the Champions League and spend more time with his family.
He will now, however, rejoin the international scene as a member of Roberto Martinez’s backroom staff, taking Anthony Barry’s place, who just joined England as assistant to Thomas Tuchel. And next month, when Portugal plays Denmark, he will start his new duty in the Nations League. The losers of that match will join Belarus, Greece, and Scotland in a qualifying group for the World Cup.
According to The Athletic, as he gets ready to work closely with one of the greatest players of modern football, Cristiano Ronaldo, along with other well-known players like Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias, and Bruno Fernandes, MacPhee finds the chance to work with former Everton manager Roberto Martinez at Portugal too good to pass up.
Ian Cathro, MacPhee’s former Hearts manager, is also having a significant impact in Portugal. The 38-year-old had a challenging first three months in charge after joining Estoril in July of last year. However, the Scotsman has won the Portuguese top flight’s coach of the month title as the Canaries have won five straight games for the first time since the 1948–49 campaign.
His peers voted for it, and Cathro received 40% more votes than Braga’s former Sheffield Wednesday manager Carlos Carvalhal and FC Arouca’s Vasco Seabra. Cathro had prior Portuguese football experience working as Nuno Espirito Santo’s assistant at Rio Ave from 2012 to 2014 before taking over at Estoril.
He took Seabra’s place, who left after just nine months, but he guided Estoril to their first cup final in eight decades, when they lost to Braga in a League Cup penalty shootout.
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