Sylvinho's Agent Exclusively Reveals: Albania is the Perfect Opportunity at the Perfect Time - Get Ready for What's Next!

Nicola Guiliani shared with Tribalfootball on a call from London that Sylvinho embodies a winner's mentality. As a consultant to Roberto Mancini and an agent for Sylvinho, Guiliani emphasized that the former player has a track record of winning in his career, having achieved success in various competitions.

Up against Italy, Croatia and Spain few people gave Albania a hope in hell of achieving anything at the Euros this summer. But it took just 23 seconds of their opening encounter with Italy to make people sit up and take notice. What’s this now? Albania are 1-0 up against the defending champions! Maybe it wasn’t a fluke that they won their qualifying group for the first time ever?AdvertisementAdvertisement

“That made him the right guy to bring a winner’s mentality inside a dressing room. When he got a job as a coach to the Albanian national team he started working on the minds of the people. What we’re seeing is just the beginning, he can still improve them a lot.”

Albania ended up exiting the tournament with one point to their name, but performed miles better than most anticipated. Not least because none of Albania's players had played in a tournament like this before.

”If you've never played in this kind of competition, you don’t have a real feeling of what is required. You need to train that. In a club, if you play in the Champions League every year, you handle that easily. If you never played in the Champions League, emotions can do something to your mind. But now the team is ready, in my opinion, to make a step forward and get maybe achieve a historical qualification for the World Cup,” an optimistic Guiliani believes.

Sylvinho’s Albanian team finished this latest round of internationals by winning away against Georgia, just like they beat Ukraine away from home last month. But while he’s a leader with an abundance of charisma, credit must also go to his team, says Guiliani.

“This is one of the secrets behind the success. It is not just Sylvinho. Doriva and Pablo Zabaleta are doing a fantastic job as well, building something special together with Fulvio Pea, who is the technical director responsible for the scouting system.” 

That “something special” could be winning their group in the Nations League where Albania have two home games coming up next month, but the wider target is of course reaching the World Cup for the first time. With that in sight, following the Euros, Sylvinho and his team extended their contracts so they now run until the end of 2025.

After stints as an assistant coach to the Brazilian national team and also soaking up inspiration while being assistant to Roberto Mancini at Inter Milan, this is Sylvinho’s third job as head coach. The Brazilian, who was capped three times by the Seleção, revealed himself how conscious he was of what kind of job he would take on next, when the Albanian federation got in touch. His first two assignments as boss didn’t pan out as expected.

“At Lyon, it was his first job and Lyon was a big club then, but what can you achieve in nine games? Nothing. Then he went to Corinthians in Brazil who has a huge number of fans and did a fantastic job with the lowest budget in the league. Then they changed the owner and that was it, but many players from Corinthians were sold for big money,” Guiliani points out.

The Albania job seem to have come at just the right moment with the right people in the right country for the former Barcelona and Arsenal player. He is an ambitious coach as Guiliani is eager to stress but also in the right environment to develop his skills.