By Zach Lowy
Born on March 22, 1970, in Pedrógão Pequeno, Portugal, Paiva was forced to put his footballing dreams on the backburner after turning 16, choosing school over training, but he remained keenly interested in football and played at the amateur level and consumed magazines like Onze Mondial.
He eventually got his first big break in 2004 when he joined Benfica, helping to mold future stars like Ruben Dias, Bernardo Silva, Ederson and Joao Felix and establishing Benfica’s status as one of the top youth development centers in the world.
Paiva coached from the youngest age groups all the way up to Benfica B in the Portuguese second tier before eventually deciding to spread his wings and depart his homeland for the first time, making the move to Ecuadorian side Independiente del Valle in December 2020.
Paiva got off to a stellar start by leading Independiente to their first-ever league title, spending 17 months at the helm before heading to Mexican side Leon, where he remained for six months before resigning.
He barely had a chance to unpack his bags before taking charge of Bahia, where, after a nine-month spell that saw him win the 2023 Campeonato Baiano, he presented his resignation.
Paiva then spent a year in charge of Mexican side Toluca, laying the groundwork for a historically impressive 2025 that has seen them win the Liga MX Clausura, Campeón de Campeones, Campeones Cup, and Liga MX Apertura. He then made the move to Botafogo in February 2025, who were riding off the back of a Copa Libertadores + Brasileirao double.
“We hadn’t lost a single game at home, only a 2-2 draw to São Paulo, whose goalkeeper was the Man of the Match, we drew away at Palmeiras and Flamengo, and whilst we dropped a lot of points away from home, little by little, we started to balance the team,” stated Paiva in an exclusive GBC Ghana Online interview.
“We started to win in the league and the Copa do Brasil, we managed to prevail in a must-win match vs. Universidad de Chile despite playing down a man for 70 minutes, and qualify for the Copa Libertadores knockout round.
I moved a midfielder back to replace the sent-off defender, I wanted to remain offensive rather than going to a 4-4-1, so I left Igor Jesus and Arthur up front because they were very fast and aggressive, with Jesus scoring the winning goal. We then won at Neymar’s Santos and beat Ceará before entering the FIFA Club World Cup in a stable cruising speed with seven wins and two draws in our last nine.”
After a slow start to proceedings, Paiva managed to turn things around at the helm, with Botafogo starting to find their mojo going into the FIFA Club World Cup.
Botafogo kicked off the tournament. The Alvinegro beat Seattle Sounders in their opener before pulling off one of the biggest upsets in the tournament’s history after beating newly crowned Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain.
Despite losing 1-0 to Atletico Madrid, Botafogo progressed to the Round of 16, where they narrowly lost 1-0 to Palmeiras in extra time.
This proved to be the last straw: 10 days after leading Botafogo to victory against PSG, Paiva was out of a job. Paiva barely had time to digest being sacked for the first time in his life before being appointed as the manager of fellow Brazilian side Fortaleza, where he lasted 10 matches before being given his marching orders.
“Fortaleza was a project that I already knew about here in Brazil which had a president that I greatly respected, and who held onto Rogério Ceni for three years and Juan Pablo Vojvoda for four, and who provided me with some stability to work with. I had just been fired from Botafogo, and I was very hurt and frustrated.
After Benfica, Botafogo was the experience I loved most as a club, as a fan base and the people I worked with on a daily basis, from the security guard who opens the door to the lady in the kitchen.
Botafogo is a family of fans and a club of players. I was super happy there, and it’s an experience I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. It was very difficul and painful for me to leave Botafogo, but when Fortaleza appeared, I looked to their track record and said: ‘Here is a project with people who give me time, I’ll think about it.”
“Fortaleza came at me with a lot of force. I initially said no. They came, insisted, insisted, and gave me a very good contract terms. They told me: ‘Mister, you have carte blanche to sign players. I believed in all of this, and even though I didn’t want to work right away, I ended up accepting and going to Fortaleza.
When I got there, I found that things were already different. There wasn’t as much carte blanche to sign. There wasn’t as much availability or financial resources to sign.
Almost all of the players you could sign were from the second tier, and the team was stuck in the standings, and I was fired after just over a month.
There’s a journalist who says to me, ‘Sir, you were the coach of Fortaleza,’ and I said, “Oh, stop, stop. I wasn’t the coach of Fortaleza.” I wasn’t Fortaleza’s coach. No one is anything for a month. No one, not a journalist, not a doctor, not a lawyer, no one for a month doing their job.
They’re not a coach or a technician in anything. For a month, I was a healer, magician, sorcerer, because I think that’s what people expected me to be.
That I would arrive there, and with a stroke of magic, without much time to train, I would be able to turn around an already very difficult situation. That’s the truth.”
Paiva has spent the past three months relaxing with his wife in Rio de Janeiro, monitoring promising young stars like Rayan and Jason Shokalook, and carefully planning out his next adventure.
Having already rejected offers from clubs in Portugal, Paraguay, Colombia and Egypt, Paiva is carefully taking his time to find the next step in his career. It remains to be seen what that step will be, but one thing’s for sure: he’s ready for wherever his journey takes him.
