It has been nothing short of a rollercoaster 2025 for Renato Paiva.

Born on March 22, 1970, in Pedrógão Pequeno, Portugal, Paiva was forced to abandon his dreams of becoming a professional footballer after turning 16, choosing school instead of training sessions, but he nevertheless remained obsessed with the beautiful game. Paiva played at the amateur level and devoured magazines like Onze Mondial before eventually getting the opportunity that he had his heart set on, joining Benfica’s academy in 2004, which was in the process of a costly reconstruction. Paiva proved influential in shaping future stars like Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias and Joao Felix, helping Benfica established itself as one of the premier youth development centers in the world.

Paiva coached all through the different age groups all the way up to the Portuguese second tier with Benfica B before deciding to leave in December 2020 and join Ecuadorian side Independiente del Valle. For the first time ever, Paiva was going to be living outside of Portugal – and for the first time, he was going to be coaching top-flight football. Paiva guided Independiente to their first-ever league title in 2021 before departing after 17 months to take charge of Mexican side León, where he remained for six months before making the move to Brazilian side Bahia. Whilst Paiva led them to the Campeonato Baiano, he lasted just nine months before presenting his resignation. He then headed to Toluca, where, despite not winning any silverware, he nevertheless laid the foundations for a historic 2025 season that has seen them become the fifth team in the 21st century to win back-to-back Liga MX titles with victories in the Liga MX Clausura, Campeón de Campeones, Campeones Cup, and Liga MX Apertura.

“During my year at Toluca, we played a very important role in signing players to improve the team. We brought Paulinho from Portugal, who is the top scorer in Mexico and who was named the tournament's best player for two consecutive tournaments, he’s a leader for Toluca who scores goals every game,” stated Paiva in an exclusive Joy News interview. “We brought in Luan, Jesús Gallardo, and Alexis Vega, a player who was completely discredited in Mexican football at Chivas. I met Alexis because I wanted to bring him to Benfica when he was a young player on the Mexican national team. I knew Alexis very well and I spoke to him on the phone and presented the project to him. I told him, "I'm going to put you back on the national team. If I do, you have to buy me dinner, or if I don't, I'll buy you dinner" and Alexis returned to the Mexican national team.”

“We finished second and were still fighting in the league, we finished the regular season tournament with a 4-0 win over champion América, and then we're in the quarterfinals. América is our opponent because they had a terrible regular season, but they’re still a really strong team that’s very used to playing in the knockout stages, and we were eliminated again in the quarterfinals. I had a one-year contract, and that's when the club decided not to renew and hire a coach who had already won a championship in Mexico – Antonio Mohamed –  who's more experienced in these knockout games, according to them.”

Paiva was then appointed as the new manager of Botafogo in February 2025, who were coming off a Copa Libertadores + Brasileirão double. After a slow start to life in Brazil, Paiva guided Botafogo to six wins from eight before heading to the United States for the FIFA Club World Cup, where, after beating Seattle Sounders, they proceeded to defeat reigning Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain, before advancing to the knockouts after holding Atletico Madrid to a 1-0 defeat. However, a narrow defeat to Palmeiras in the Round of 16 would condemn him to an early dismissal. 10 days after guiding them to an epic win vs. PSG, Paiva was out of a job.

He wasn’t unemployed for that long, taking charge of Fortaleza two weeks later and lasting just 10 matches in charge before being dismissed at the end of August. He’s spent the past few months in Rio de Janeiro, carefully reflecting on a year that has seen him get sacked for the first and second time in his career. It remains to be seen what Paiva’s next step will be – he could return to Mexico or Ecuador, or he could head to an MLS side and work with promising young stars like Alex Freeman or Jason Shokalook. He could return to his homeland, having received offers from Portugal, Egypt, Paraguay and Colombia in recent months, or he could remain in Brazil. But if he does remain put and join a fourth Brazilian club, he will be well aware of the league’s unique difficulties which, according to Paiva, have resulted in Brazil failing to win the FIFA World Cup since 2002.

“Brazil hasn't been world champions since 2002, despite always being the largest producer of players in the world in terms of numbers and quality. For me, Brazil should always be in the World Cup semifinals and the Copa América Final, at least, because there's no way around it: they have too many well-trained players. Look, Argentina is a smaller country, but it's organized itself, and now it's starting to win World Cups. The Brazilian league is one of the best and toughest in the world. But look at how many foreign players are now in the Brasileirao and how few Brazilian players they are.”

“Compared to those Brazil teams with Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Romario, Rivaldo, Zico, Sócrates…today, you look at Brazil and don’t see this amount of distinguished players. Of course, they're great players, but they haven’t had an all-time great since Neymar. Vinicius is a great player but he’s inconsistent…he’s not at Neymar’s level and obviously not Ronaldo or Ronaldinho’s either. Why? Because Brazil doesn’t facilitate the training and development process of young players. Players have stopped training. They just play, compete, compete, compete, play, rest, play, rest, play, rest. Brazil will have serious problems in the future if it doesn't stop to think about this. For me, this is the biggest problem with Brazilian football.”