Otto Glória

Otto Glória was born in Rio de Janeiro on 9 January 1917 and died on 4 September 1986. He made his name as a coach rather than a player, working in Brazilian football with Botafogo and Vasco da Gama before Benfica brought him to Lisbon in the summer of 1954. His first match, on 29 August 1954, was a 1-0 win over Belenenses.

His two spells at the club are often run together into a single span, but they were separate. The first lasted from 1954 to 1959 and coincided with the opening of the new Estádio da Luz in December 1954; he won the national championship in 1954/55 and 1956/57 and the Taça de Portugal in 1954/55, 1956/57 and 1958/59. He returned in December 1967, taking over in mid-season from Fernando Riera, and stayed until 1970, winning the championships of 1967/68 and 1968/69 and the Taça de Portugal of 1968/69. Across the two spells he took charge of 243 matches and won 159. His second spell also produced Benfica's fifth European Cup final, at Wembley in May 1968, where Manchester United won 4-1 after extra time.

He was a moderniser. He brought systematic physical preparation, planned training sessions and a tactical vocabulary to a club that had been run largely on enthusiasm, and he built the framework within which the great side of the 1960s was assembled. His teams attacked through quick, direct wing play and demanded that the full-backs join in, and he trusted young players.

Between and after his Benfica spells he coached Marseille, Belenenses, Sporting, Grêmio and Portuguesa. He led Portugal at the 1966 World Cup, where a team built around Eusébio finished third, the country's best performance for forty years, and in 1980 he took Nigeria to their first Africa Cup of Nations title. He died in Lisbon.