Who is Marco Silva, the man in line for the Hull City job?

He has spent his career under the ‘new Mourinho’ tag, now he's come to England to prove it

(PA)

It was November 2015 and Jose Mourinho, in his final days in charge of Chelsea, was discussing his forthcoming trip to Israel to play Maccabi Tel Aviv. He was asked about Arsenal’s own difficult away game in Olympiakos, which they needed to win to go through. He said that he hoped they did not, but not for the usual spiteful reasons.

“Arsenal are in a group where a kid friend of mine is the manager of Olympiakos,” Mourinho said. “It would be fantastic for the kid’s career to go through. So I have to be honest and say that I would like the kid and Olympiakos to go on.” Arsenal won, Olympiakos went out and six months later the kid quit.

That ‘kid’ was Marco Silva and today [Wednesday] he flew to Hull to replace Mike Phelan as manager of the seemingly-doomed club. It is an almost impossible job but Silva is a brave coach. He has spent his career labouring under the ‘new Mourinho’ tag. Now, at the age of 39, three years younger than Mourinho was when he arrived at Chelsea, he has come to England to prove it.

Silva has signed an 18-month deal at Hull, but one that can be broken after six months if, as seems likely, Hull are relegated. The plan is that Silva will be coaching in the Premier League next season, if not at Hull City then somewhere else. He sees Hull as his perfect route into the English game, a route that he has sought for some time.

Silva was in the frame to replace Kenny Jackett at Wolves last summer, a job that eventually went to Walter Zenga. Now he can go straight in at the top flight, with a League Cup semi-final against his hero Mourinho to look forward to on Tuesday.

Despite the comparisons with Mourinho, they owe more to his precocity than to his style of play. Silva is an attacking coach whose teams play a 4-3-3 with high pressure on the opposition defence. He was only 34 when he took over coaching Estoril, and did well enough stabilising the small club in mid-table that in the summer of 2014 he was recruited by Sporting Lisbon to replace Leonardo Jardim, who was heading to Monaco.

In his one season at Sporting, Silva continued to develop the young players left behind by Jardim, such as William Carvalho and Joao Mario, playing eye-catching football, finshing third and even delivering the Portuguese Cup, Sporting’s first trophy after six wilderness years.

But Bruno de Carvalho, Sporting’s impulsive maverick president, decided he could do better than Silva and offered Jorge Jesus, then at Benfica, big money to come and manage their hated Lisbon rivals instead. Jesus said yes so Silva was sacked, days after winning the cup, on the ludicrous grounds of failing to wear a club suit on duty.

Benfica wanted Silva to replace Jesus but it was not possible. Silva’s termination with Sporting stated that he would have to pay the club if he were appointed by another Portuguese team. Porto were also keen but were rebuffed for the same reasons.

So Silva had no option but to go abroad and went to Athens to coach Olympiakos. He did one good year there but it was never going to be a long-term thing and he left last summer. England was on his mind. Six months later he has his chance.