Andre Villas-Boas led Porto to the Europa League title in 2011 before overseeing Chelsea and Tottenham in the Premier League. But the 46-year-old switched sports when he became a rally driver and went on to crash out of the Dakar Rally in 2018.
Villas-Boas worked as a scout in Jose Mourinho’s first spell as Chelsea manager. He followed his compatriot to Inter Milan before taking up his first managerial position at Portuguese club Coimbra in 2009.
Despite his initial good luck with Porto, where he also won the Primeira Liga and Portuguese Cup, Villas-Boas failed to identify himself in English football after taking charge of Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2011 and bidding farewell to Chelsea just nine months after taking over. . the highest work. He appointed Tottenham manager in July 2012 but only held the position for 8 months before receiving his order to leave.
Villas-Boas earned the Russian name with Zenit St. Petersburg, but had already announced his goal of devoting himself to rallying when he told Portuguese newspaper O Jogo: “For me there is a limit and, in the next five to ten years, I will stop.
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“Competing in the Dakar Rally is my life’s ambition and it’s all I know I have to do. It has gone from being a hobby to an obligation, a destiny in life, but I will only be able to do it when I leave football. I’ll do it. “
Villas-Boas finally fulfilled his wish to participate in the Dakar Rally. But he was taken to hospital after crashing into a sand dune on level 4 in Peru and was forced to retire, telling his enthusiasts on Instagram: “Just to let everyone know that [co-pilot] Ruben [Faria] and I are safe and sound and we are back in the bivouac. We jumped off a dune and hit the nose of the car first. Unfortunately, the Dakar is over for us.
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Villas-Boas is lately unemployed after an 18-month tenure at the helm of Marseille, which ended in February 2021, but in either of those roles, he competed in the 2018 Baja TT do Pinhal and the 2022 WRC. Vodafone Rally de Portugal.
And after the race on home soil, the Portuguese told reporters: “It’s one of the things you dream about when you’re a kid. I’ve been watching rallies since I was a kid, as well as Formula 1. It’s very special, it’s a wonderful opportunity because we do it for our positive causes. It’s very stressful to tell the truth. I didn’t know how intense it was.
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