Brazilian João Bravo has enjoyed a thoroughly successful professional career. After stints in many of the world’s top leagues and Brazil’s NT, with which he won a gold medal at the 2010 World Championship, he has settled with Turkey’s Arkas Spor, where he has played since 2015. At 39 years old, he knows he doesn’t have that much time left to play at a high level, and started studying to become a coach. His hard work and dedication caught the attention of his coach at Arkas, Canadian Glenn Hoag, who invited him to coach the country’s U21 Men’s team as a first step to his coaching career.
Here is how he reacted to his coach’s invitation (Globo.com):
“The invitation came as a total surprise to me, I did not expect it. But I am very happy with this opportunity. It is very important that I take this first step in these goals that I’ve set for myself. I want to be a coach when I finish my professional playing career. Canada does not have clubs in this specific age category, like in Brazil for example. The players are college athletes who try out for the team. I’ll get there not knowing much about these athletes, so first I’ll just observe the players for a while before starting.”
João has also stated that he thinks he has about two seasons left in his playing career. After this time, he hopes to join coach Glenn on Arkas as his assistant as well.
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