“I think it would be a perfect marriage, I think Joao will connect perfectly with a coach like Pep Guardiola,” says Joao Tralhao of his former pupil, Joao Cancelo, who has joined Manchester City for what appears to be a fairly low fee of £24 million, plus the under-used Danilo.
“Guardiola and his staff are very detailed coaches, they want to control everything, they want to put the responsibility on the players and Joao is this kind of player.”
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The kind of player, Tralhao says, who demanded answers of his coaches back in the Benfica youth teams. He still does today, perhaps one of the reasons why he is on the move again, City his third club in three seasons.
“He wanted to know the rules and most important was that he wanted the rules to always be followed strictly, and if anything wasn’t fair he went crazy,” Tralhao, who coached Benfica’s under-18s and under-19s, says. “For a coach, you learned from him because he’s a talented player but he is, how can I say this… now players are different, players question the coach, they want to know what they are doing, it’s not the same as before, they want to know everything and Joao is one of these players. Things need to be logical for him and when everything works he is one of the best players in the world.”
Everything usually works out well for Guardiola’s teams and City can look forward to getting their hands on a player they have coveted for years but when speaking to those who have closely followed Cancelo’s career to date, there are recurring themes, both good and bad.
“Of course Kyle Walker and Danilo are amazing players, they are very good players, top players,” Tralhao says, “but when we talk about the last third, the difference that a full-back could make or offer to the team, I think when you get to the last third you need to be different, you need to be very good at one-v-one situations, you need to be very good at decision-making, and you need to have the capacity to win duels when you have the ball, to cross, to make assists, and these type of qualities I think Joao has.
“This is why I think Guardiola and his staff wanted to bring him into the team because Kyle Walker is a very good player, an enormous player, Danilo also, but it makes total sense to be most comfortable playing in the last third, and I think Joao is like a fish in water in that sense.
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“Ronaldo can say now his crosses are very good. Last season in Turin, Joao made some amazing assists for Ronaldo and the others. When he crosses, he is very efficient also. When you know Joao better, when you know his qualities, you will see that he can be one of the best players in the world in his position.”
Cancelo, 25, has a similar profile to Benjamin Mendy – a remarkable attacking force but not the best defender.
Pako Ayestaran, Rafael Benitez’s former assistant who coached Cancelo at Valencia, tells The Athletic: “Offensively he’s a player with exceptional quality and determination but perhaps his attention, his awareness in defence, is not at that level, but probably after seeing him playing in Italy that has improved.”
He has improved in the years since leaving Benfica for Valencia as a 20-year-old – as a result of the club’s reluctance to embed promising youngsters into their first-team (Bernardo Silva was another victim) – but the questions over his defensive ability, and attitude, that followed him to Italy now follow him to England.
He spent 2017-18 on loan at Inter, where club legend Giuseppe Bergomi publicly stated that he would not pay €35 million (£32 million) for him because he couldn’t defend. Cancelo says training methods in Italy helped to improve the defensive side of his game and he has praised the club’s defensive coach, Giovanni Martusciello, but he did once brand the sessions “a bit tedious and boring”.
On one occasion he clashed with coach Luciano Spalletti, who wanted him to play left back and did not take well to having his decision questioned. Cancelo also complained at being switched to left back during a game with Napoli.
“There were situations that I did not agree with him,” Cancelo said of the training ground incident in an interview with O Jogo last summer. “It’s normal. A player should not be a prisoner or be quiet. A player does not know everything but neither does a coach. So it is only right to have a calm and healthy face-to-face.”
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Despite that, he ended the season as one of Inter’s stand-out players but they could not afford his fee and Juve swooped.
Ayestaran adds: “He is a player who finds it hard to suppress his frustration. At a competitive level it’s fundamental that you do that. The errors in certain moments could make him mentally switch off from the training session or even the competition.
“That’s something that I imagine he has worked on in the last few years but perhaps that was his Achilles’ heel, the capacity of putting up with frustration and dealing with mistakes.”
This is the biggest issue facing John Stones heading into next season, having missed the run-in of each of his three seasons at City, and it is still something that needs to be corrected in Cancelo’s game after an up-and-down season at Juventus.
“The fans loved him because after seven years of Stephan Lichtsteiner they suddenly saw a right-back that could also play football,” says Guido Vaciago, Juve chief reporter for Italian newspaper Tuttosport. “I love Lichtsteiner but he is a different player to Cancelo. The fans loved the way he attacks, the way he crosses.
“At the end of the first part of the season, if you had asked me what I thought about Cancelo, I would say to you that he would be the Juventus right-back for the next five years and he will be one of the best right-backs in the world. He would be the Marcelo of the right-wing, and I was very impressed by him.”
But things changed quickly. “Then the second part of the season was terrible,” Vaciago adds matter-of-factly. “He made a lot of defensive mistakes and he completely lacked the right mentality. To make a lot of mistakes in Italy is blasphemy. A defender must defend. I was talking with (Massimiliano) Allegri and he was saying to me that a defender must defend, I pointed out how well he can cross, and Allegri said, ‘I don’t care, a defender must defend’.”
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Spookily, Vaciago goes on to make the exact same observation about the Portugal international that Tralhao made: “When Juventus was struggling, for example in the match against Atletico Madrid in Madrid when they lost 2-0, Massimiliano Allegri kept him on the bench because he understood that Cancelo is the kind of player that when everything is going well, he plays well. When something begins to go wrong – but not necessarily a disaster – but something is not working, he loses his confidence, he loses strength and he’s very scared, you see a scared player.”
Juventus fans point to a mistake in the Champions League quarter-final clash with Ajax as one of these trigger points, despite having already delivered a trademark cross for Ronaldo to open the scoring.
“I think there are two reasons why Juventus sold him,” Vaciago continues. “One is money – they decided that he can be a logical sacrifice in the name of the balance sheet. They don’t believe in him so much to wait for him to solve his psychological problem, to overcome that barrier.”
Indeed, City knew Juve needed the money. The Premier League champions, facing a Champions League ban from UEFA due to alleged financial irregularities, are keeping a close eye on their European rivals’ business this summer as they prepare a case that may eventually be heard in court. They know Juve needed to raise capital to help off-set the huge cost of signing Ronaldo last summer, not to mention the wages of Aaron Ramsey and Matthijs De Light.
City have had Cancelo on their radar for years and in January 2017 considered him as a candidate for their upcoming defensive overhaul, only to plump for Walker and Dani Alves (who pulled out at the 11th hour). This time around they moved decisively and before the end of last season they had agreed terms.
Fabio Paratici, Juve’s sporting director, opened talks with City after the FA Cup final and asked for €55 million (£51 million). City offered Danilo, who Juve did not want. The Brazilian right-back wanted more regular first-team football but could not find any top clubs willing to give it to him, and without selling him City would never have struck a deal for Cancelo. They waited Juve out, and nearly two months after establishing the overall value of the deal they went back and made things clear: you take Danilo as part of the deal or you get nothing.
Despite the concerns over his defensive ability and lapses in mentality, City may well have pulled off a real coup. Like Mendy, Cancelo’s attacking strengths will be maximised, and Guardiola’s carefully designed systems should help ensure ‘everything goes well’.
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In any case, Tralhao insists Cancelo’s lapses are nothing to worry about. “I don’t see that, I see it differently. He is very demanding, he likes to perform 100 per cent, always. Sometimes he doesn’t accept his mistakes but I think it’s a good thing, it shows the coaches that he is a perfectionist. I think he will be more prepared now to deal with his mistakes, he will understand that some mistakes are normal, and in Juventus I saw that when he made mistakes he moved on. I think he will be much more prepared at City, he is more mentally grown.”
He is sure to be among friends, too. In Tralhao’s Benfica youth teams he played alongside Bernardo, who captained the side, while Ederson was also at the club. Bernardo, the incredibly popular City midfielder, was among the team-mates who helped get Cancelo back on track when his mother died in a car crash six years ago. Cancelo and his brother, Pedro, were in the car but escaped with minor injuries.
“The following two months were extremely difficult,” Cancelo told O Jogo. “Before, it was her who came and take me to training. She helped me in everything. After that moment when she was gone, there was no one waiting for me. I came home and went to bed crying. I have my mother in my heart and she continues to be present with me.”
Tralhao, Bernardo and others rallied around, and that season the 1994 generation clinched their third consecutive Portuguese youth title. Before the decisive match he told Tralhao, “We need to win to be champions, I will give my life to win”.
He scored twice in a 2-1 victory, the first directly from a corner (an ‘Olympic goal’, as they say in Portugal), the second a stunning free kick.
“He asked me before if he could take it,” Tralhao says. “I said if you are confident you can take it, and he said, ‘I will score it and we will win’. It was a very special story.” Cancelo dedicated the victory to his mother.
Despite their different journeys since leaving Benfica, he and Bernardo have remained close friends. On Tuesday night they dined together, alongside City director of football, Txiki Begiristain, and Cancelo’s agent, Jorge Mendes, at Tast, the Manchester restaurant co-owned by Guardiola.
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“When I say he is very close to Bernardo Silva you can imagine how he is as a person because you know Bernardo is a very funny guy, a very kind guy, and Bernardo is one of Joao’s best friends,” Tralhao says.
“In the dressing room he’s a very good guy, he doesn’t give anybody any problems.”
Ayestaran concurs: “In terms of his personality there are no doubts, he is a player who lives for football. He took care of every aspect of his game, on and off the pitch.
“In the dressing room he was well liked, he was really friendly, he used to share jokes with everybody and that is the kind of player that makes a dressing room.”
At Inter he was close with compatriot Joao Mario and Brazilians Dalbert, Miranda and Eder, the latter becoming a friend for life. At Juve, however, his only close friend was Ronaldo, whose house he often visited for dinner.
Although he spent time with Paulo Dybala and other South Americans, he did not break into the influential group of Italians, such as Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci, who dominate the dressing room and share a closer bond than those found in many European clubs. For example, Paul Pogba and Fernando Llorente are still members of the Juventus players’ WhatsApp group, despite having left years ago. When Juve beat Manchester United at Old Trafford last season, Pogba went to the away dressing room to congratulate (and, it is said, celebrate) with his former team-mates.
“At City he could be a bomba,” Ayestaran says. “From the start his footballing ability was beyond doubt, he has some really exceptional technical details that are helped further by a fantastic physical capacity that allows him to run up and down the line continuously.
“I remember the game against Eibar at home when we won 4-0, the amount he created in attack was phenomenal. Rodrigo Moreno played as a false nine and Cancelo played on the wing and the combination between the two was ridiculous.”
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Tralhao, who has also coached Joao Felix and ranks Cancelo among the top five players he has ever worked with, adds: “He was, and is, developing into one of the best right full-backs around.
“He is very talented, he can play every position because he’s very clever, he understands the match tactically, his game knowledge is very high. I think he sees things that only elite players can see in the match. He’s different from the others, he can see everything in every position.
“That’s not usual for a full back. If you play him as a midfielder on the right side he will play and he will be successful, if you play him as a winger he will do the same.
“These kind of qualities you don’t find in the modern day. I think with his talent he’s at a high level, a really, really, really high level. Technically, when Joao has the ball, I don’t think we need much time to realise he is different to the others. When I see Joao with the ball I used to say that the ball belongs to Joao, it belongs to his body, because his control of the ball is something special.”
We’ll have to wait and see whether Joao Cancelo and Manchester City will make the perfect marriage or end in a fractious divorce.
(Photo: Filipe Amorim/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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