Biography
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Santana played his entire career as a central defender in his native Brazil in the 1970s. He became best known as a player at Vasco da Gama, but failed to earn a cap with the national team. In 1980, he retired as a player and moved on to club management with Al Wasl in the United Arab Emirates. While much of his management career has been with Brazilian clubs, Santana has also coached clubs in Saudi Arabia and Vegalta Sendai in Japan's J-League.
Santana is one of the few head coaches to win Brazil's Campeonato Carioca with each of the four big clubs (Botafogo, Flamengo, Fluminense, and Vasco da Gama). His playing style has been characterized as defensive, with the main objective of preventing the opposition from scoring.
In 2004, Santana successfully kept Vasco da Gama from relegation to the second division of Campeonato Brasileiro in his fourth stint as club's head coach. A year later, he was hired by Flamengo to also save them from relegation, which he did successfully. Having established a reputation as an "escape artist" capable of rescuing teams from relegation, he returned to Flamengo in 2007 with the same goal. He not only prevented relegation, but lead the Rio state club to a surprising third place finish to qualify for the 2008 Copa Libertadores.
In April 2008, Santana replaced his countryman, Carlos Alberto Parreira, as the coach of the South Africa national football team following a recommendation from Parreira himself who left the job due to personal reasons. In October 2009 Santana was dismissed from the position due to the poor results achieved by the team; most notably a streak of eight defeats in his last nine games as coach of the Bafana Bafana.
Joel Santana returned for his fifth spell as Flamengo's head coach on February 3, 2012. On July 23, 2012, Santana, after two consecutives loses, against Corinthians and Cruzeiro, was fired from Flamengo.
Read more about this topic: Joel Santana
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