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Fernando Gomes announced that Filipe Ribeiro is the new formation coordinator at FC Porto. Antonio Natal's successor, aged 47, was already an integral part of the Porto structure, in which he served as sub-coordinator of the youth levels.

Born in Lixa, his career as an athlete was marked within the four lines, but in the pavilion, as a federated futsal player, at the same time as he graduated in Sports and specialized in football at the Faculty of Sports of the University of Porto. In his last seasons as an athlete, at Paredes, he alternated his roles as a futsal player with those of youth coach and assistant coach of the club's main football team.

The former assistant coach of the Porto Under-19s continued his career in the North, having also played for Penafiel, Gil Vicente, Leça and Serzedo – the club where he won an AF Porto Cup – before joining Vitória de Guimarães. At Cidade Berço, he initially assumed the role of assistant coach, and then made his debut as training coordinator, a role he repeated at Paços de Ferreira. This was followed by an experience as head coach at Jonava, in Lithuania, and a spell at Merelinense prior to his arrival at FC Porto in July 2019.

Fernando Gomes, Director of training, left “a word of recognition to Professor Natal” for everything that he gave to the club in the last two years and announced Filipe Ribeiro as the new person in charge, having explained that this is a well-known member of the blue and white management, who believes that the coordinator will be “an added value for FC Porto”. The director also left the guarantee that the “focus is and will continue to be the same”: “Seeking to form champions to feed our main team and achieve better sporting and financial performance for the club”.

Filipe Ribeiro, in his first words as technical coordinator, was aware of the “permanent and constant challenges, and for those within the club, exciting ones” that he will face and was in line with the ideas presented by Fernando Gomes: “The biggest challenge What we have, and as history has shown, is to empower our players so that they can enter the first team. We want to create a path that continues to demonstrate that FC Porto is at the forefront, as we have seen recently”.

Fernando Gomes
“I would like to give a word of recognition to Professor Natal who, while he was able, in the two years he was with us, gave his best in terms of availability, competence and dedication to the club. I also want to announce the future Technical Coordinator of the base, it will be Filipe Ribeiro. He is a coach who has been with us for three years, he joined our training as sub-coordinator, he had already held the role of coordinator at clubs such as Paços de Ferreira and Vitória de Guimarães. It is an element that we know well and that we believe will be an added value for FC Porto. We understand that investment in human resources and talent is something that we always have to take into account at the club and this is why Filipe Ribeiro joined us. Our focus is and will continue to be the same, which is to seek to form champions to feed our first team and achieve better sporting and financial performance for the club.”

Filipe Ribeiro
“It is clear that, at our club, the challenges are permanent and constant, and for those within the club they are all exciting. The biggest challenge we have, and as history has shown, is to empower our players so that they can join the first team. It's everyone's dream and challenge and, towards this, a vast team works every day. My future perspective fits into this. We always look ahead and aim to improve all sectors that are part of the training structure. We want to create a path that continues to demonstrate that FC Porto is at the forefront, as we have seen recently.”

However, Rääk remained a football fanatic who watches matches for hours a day. He began his higher education at the Lithuanian Sports University in Kaunas.

"While studying at the Lithuanian Sports University, I started looking for an outlet to do some kind of internship and CV besides school. I wrote to all the clubs in the region and got a job at the football department of Kauno Žalgiris. I started analyzing the games of the representative team and traveling with them. I didn't earn anything from it, I was basically a volunteer."

Wrote to everyone, only HJK answered

"Since the beginning of the [2023] season for Kauno Žalgiris was terribly bad, and my contact - the assistant coach through whom I got there - was let go along with the entire staff , I changed universities and came to Finland to continue with jalka," says Rääk.

Now he studies sports business at the University of Jyväskylä. When he arrived in Finland, his tactic was the same as in Lithuania: write to all the clubs there.

"I was lucky - HJK responded to me. No other club responded. At first I showed a bit of my skills, HJK asked a few questions and I sent them one or two analyses. They liked what I was doing and thinking," Rääk says.

In December, the Estonian reached an agreement with HJK, and he started working there in January of this year. In March, he undertook a longer trip, successively visiting Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Slovakia.