Vanderlei Luxemburgo

Vanderlei Luxemburgo da Silva (born 10 May 1952) is a Brazilian professional football coach and former player.

He was recently the head coach of Corinthians.

Born in Nova Iguaçu, Rio de Janeiro, Luxemburgo played the most of his youth football for Botafogo, but made his senior debut with Flamengo in 1972; at the club, he was mainly a backup to Júnior.

He left Fla in 1978 to Internacional, but remained at the club for just one year before returning to his first team, Botafogo.

A left wingback, Luxemburgo represented Flamengo, Internacional and Botafogo before retiring in 1980.

He subsequently became a coach and led Palmeiras, Corinthians, Cruzeiro and Santos to Série A titles, winning the tournament five times, a record total.

He retired in 1980, aged 28, due to a knee injury.

Before being a first team trainer, Luxemburgo spent the rest of the 1980 campaign with Antônio Lopes' Olaria, but not being officially under contract with the club.

He was also Lopes' assistant at America-RJ (1981) and Vasco da Gama (1981–82).

Luxemburgo's first coaching experience occurred in 1983, with Campo Grande; he only lasted eight matches at the club, being sacked after altercations with the board.

In the same year, he also managed Rio Branco-ES, winning the Campeonato Capixaba with the side.

In 1984, after managing Friburguense, Luxemburgo then moved abroad to Saudi Arabia's Al-Ittihad; initially Joubert's assistant, he was in subsequently charge of the club.

He was at the helm of Democrata-GV in the following year, but only lasted three months.

Luxemburgo subsequently rejoined Lopes' staff at Fluminense in 1986, where he acted as head coach of the under-20 squad.

In the following year, he replaced Pinheiro in charge of America-RJ.

Another stint in the Middle East following, being again assistant of Joubert at Al-Shabab.

Luxemburgo returned to Brazil in October 1988, after being invited to manage Bragantino, winning the 1990 Campeonato Paulista.

He subsequently worked at Flamengo, Guarani and Ponte Preta before being hired by Palmeiras in 1993; he led the latter club to both the state and league championships in 1993 and 1994.

When Luxemburgo left in 1995 for Flamengo, Palmeiras' performance was visibly affected, and when he came back in 1996 (after a short period at Paraná), the team won the São Paulo State championship again.

After a brief stint at Santos, in 1998 he went to Corinthians and won the league that year.

He left the club in the following year, to join the Brazilian Football Confederation.

Luxemburgo coached Brazil after the 1998 FIFA World Cup until the end of 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

Most notably, he is known for centering his play around Rivaldo.

In 1999 the Seleção won the Copa América undefeated, in addition to finishing in second place at the 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup.

However, he is also remembered for the disastrous performance at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, where Brazil lost 1–2 in overtime to gold medal winners Cameroon in the quarter-finals, despite having a two men advantage in that game.

He was often blamed at this tournament for leaving out Romário, who had gone on national television, pleading his case to play in the tournament.

In 2001, he went back to Corinthians and won yet another State Championship.

In 2003, he led Cruzeiro Esporte Clube to win the Brazilian National League.

Even more impressively, the club won two of the three competitions (the Campeonato Mineiro and the Copa do Brasil) without losing a single match.

The following year he led Santos to win the Brazilian Championship.

Luxemburgo also stirred up controversy by having a one-way transmission device on a forward of his club team during a match.

He said that the Cameroon match inspired him to create a device in order to tell his players where and when to attack.

The CBF ruled days later that such electronic devices were illegal, but did not penalize him for using it in that match.

Luxemburgo was hired as Real Madrid's coach from Santos in the second half of the 2004–05 season when Mariano García Remón was dismissed from the job.

He led Real Madrid to seven consecutive league wins, putting them back in the title race but ended up losing it four points behind FC Barcelona.

In the following season, Real Madrid started brightly.

However, the introduction of a new formation (the Magic Rectangle, a 4–2–2–2 formation), combined with multiple injury issues and poor performances began Luxemburgo's downfall.

Calls for him to resign were intensified after a humiliating 0–3 home defeat to long-time rivals, Barcelona.

In 2005 he worked at Real Madrid, but was dismissed in December of that year.

His surname is after revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.