Estoril announced Vasco Matos had left as head coach

At the Fontelo, Estoril’s players left the pitch after a 2-1 defeat by Académico de Viseu. Five days later, on 15 October, the club announced that Vasco Matos had left his post as head coach. The announcement followed a loss that left Estoril still searching for its first league win of the season.

Estoril had initially given Vasco Matos time, with several summer signings arriving late and the squad still being brought together. But eight league matches have brought no wins: two draws and six defeats, leaving the club bottom with two points. After the latest loss, patience gave way to the need for an immediate change. The decision puts results ahead of continuity with a coach appointed to lead a longer project.

That contract had been drawn up after a delayed appointment. Estoril took about a month to replace Ian Cathro, who left for Saint-Étienne, and presented Matos only after pre-season training had begun, according to O Jogo, RTP and other Portuguese outlets. The new coach therefore entered a project already under way, rather than building it from the first day of preparation.

Matos arrived with a recent record that made the appointment look like a step forward. He had spent the previous three seasons at Santa Clara, helping the club win the II Liga and secure promotion in 2023-24. The following season, he guided them to fifth in the top flight, their best-ever league finish, and into the Conference League qualifying rounds. Santa Clara did not reach the competition’s league phase.

That rise gave Estoril reason to see him as more than a short-term fix. His work had taken Santa Clara from the second tier to a record league placing, and the club chose him after a search that lasted around a month. Yet the late start meant his first task was to shape a squad whose preparation had already begun. The next question was whether that side could turn its attacking play into results.

The concern was not only that Estoril were losing, but that their attack was producing too little to turn matches around. After seven league rounds, they had scored just three goals, A Bola reported on 7 October. The same report identified a second weakness: Estoril were struggling to hold leads, leaving them exposed even when they had moved in front.

Those flaws fed directly into the position at the bottom, according to A Bola. Few goals left little margin for mistakes, while failing to protect an advantage meant that a promising moment could not reliably become points. The two problems compounded each other: Estoril needed to attack more effectively to take control, and then to defend that control when they had it.

By the time Matos left, the club had scored four times in eight matches. That total came alongside two draws and six defeats, a record that offered little evidence of the attacking improvement required to climb away from last place.

The spell that ended Matos’s Estoril tenure was already familiar from his previous job. His seven-match winless run at Estoril matched the longest such sequence of his coaching career: he had also gone seven games without a win at Santa Clara before leaving in January 2026.

That Santa Clara departure came after a 4-2 defeat by Estoril, the club Matos would later join. He was without a club before Estoril appointed him, turning the move into a return against the side that had been involved in his previous exit. At Estoril, the poor run again brought his time in charge to an end.

The break is especially stark because Estoril had planned for Matos to stay much longer. His contract was due to run until 2028, with Público specifying that it covered the end of the 2027-28 season. The club’s announcement that negotiations had begun to end the contract leaves its formal conclusion unresolved, but the intended length of the agreement shows how quickly the original plan has changed.

Estoril’s first response to last place was not to dismiss Matos. After the defeat by Casa Pia on 20 September, O Jogo reported that the SAD remained confident he needed time, with late arrivals still joining the squad. The September break was seen by the coaching staff and the club’s decision-makers as a second pre-season, a chance to work with a complete group. At a 6 September press conference, Matos said the late signings had been planned with the club and that the team’s identity was still developing; wins would accelerate that process, while defeats would slow it.

The club had also presented Matos as a deliberate choice, not a stopgap. At his appointment, president Begoña Santiago said Estoril had taken care to find a coach who matched its identity, methods and ambitions.

“We are fully convinced he is the right person to lead this project and have complete confidence in Vasco’s quality, his coaching staff and the work they will do at the club.”

After the Casa Pia defeat, O Jogo also reported that Estoril’s leadership planned to meet the players to demand greater effort while showing support for Matos. The report said the coach felt his team had not given everything in that match.

Record described Estoril’s opening as the worst start in the club’s top-flight history, with the results raising relegation alarms. That warning put the scale of the crisis beyond a bad run of form: the club was already facing the prospect of a fight to stay up.

Estoril was not the only Portuguese club to change coaches early in the 2026-27 season. Rio Ave dismissed Sotirios Silaidopoulos after its first seven league matches, when it had one win and sat 16th. His replacement, Vasco Seabra, began with a 3-2 home victory over Nacional.

Seabra had left Arouca to take the Rio Ave job; Arouca then appointed Vítor Severino. The sequence shows how quickly clubs have turned to a new coach in response to poor starts, though Rio Ave’s immediate win offered no guarantee of a lasting recovery.

The club has not announced a successor, and its statement says negotiations have begun with Matos to end his sports employment contract.

Estoril’s next test is an away Portuguese Cup tie against Salgueiros, scheduled for Fiães. The match comes just days after the announcement, leaving little time for the club to clarify who will lead the team.

• The identity of the person in charge before the match against Salgueiros on 18 October 2026 at 15:00.
• Estoril’s performance in the away Taça de Portugal tie, the first match after Matos’s departure.
• The outcome of negotiations between Estoril and Matos to end his contract.