Manuel Cajuda is a man with history and many stories. In football, it was all. Player, coach and today is president of View, club of his land. But it was in the technical command of several teams in Portugal and abroad that it became an unavoidable figure of Portuguese football. He made history in several clubs, but it was in Braga that he left the biggest mark. There were many squads, several teams and some caricatured episodes.
“I saved a player’s wedding”
Without revealing the club or identity of the footballer, Cajuda recalls the situation: “One player took a woman to the internship. I knew and went to talk to the president because there had to be a punishment. But I needed him to play the next day and couldn’t leave him out.”
Together with the management, a fine was decided: “I told you we were going to take 50% of your salary and he said no. And I said, ‘Okay, so I’ll tell your wife.’ His reaction changed soon.”
So Manuel Cajuda explained that the fine would be maintained, but made in a phased way “so that there is no lack of money at home and the woman does not suspect.”
“Result, I saved a wedding and stayed with the player at hand by the end of the time,” he recalls, between laughs.
“I never hid my benfiquism, I had the opportunity to train Benfica, but at the time I refused”
“There was a phase when my professional colleagues had a lot of problems taking on what their club was. I was always independent and that was never a problem for me,” says Manuel Cajuda who never hid to be a supporter of Benfica, even when it was in other clubs that faced the eagles.
In one of these moments, at the service of Vitória, he took Guimarães’s team to Luz, won, and in the end remembered his benfiquism: “The lie only wins when the truth does not comment.”
Cajuda recalls that during his passage through Marítimo, he had the opportunity to train Benfica, but preferred to refuse:
“At that time, Benfica was a coach cemetery. I felt it was not the time. Besides, I always preferred the family side and I know that I would deprive my company’s family if I accepted a position of this dimension. Big team coach enters a club at 7am and leaves at night. They can say I was bad, but I was always a happy coach with my choices.”
“In Braga, I downloaded my pants and said to the players, ‘If they want to eat me, eat me now.’ They were ways to motivate the team.”
In times of conveying a message to players, coaches do not always choose to speak calmly.
Manuel Cajuda admits that his experience was to adapt the message to different situations.
“One day I went to the morning training and tie and the afternoon training really a monkey. It was to show that one thing is one thing and something is something else,” he says, remembering that everything he did and said had a purpose.
Once, in Braga, Manuel Cajuda felt the need to be even more graphic at the range of a game that his team was not having the best performance: “I lowered my pants and told players to want to eat to do it there because they had no other opportunity.”
Manuel Cajuda recalls that even this part had the purpose of awakening the team and improving production: “They were ways to motivate players.”
