Paulo Pereira (handballer)

Paulo Pereira (born 21 March 1965) is a Portuguese handball coach of the Portuguese men's national team.
In 2016, the Portuguese Handball Federation appointed him as the new head coach of the Portugal national team, succeeding Rolando Freitas. His current contract extends until 2025.
He is best known for transforming the Portugal national team into a competitive force on the international stage, leading them to a 6th-place finish at the 2020 European Men's Handball Championship, and their first-ever appearance at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where they placed 9th. .
In 2025 he led the Portugal team to reach the semifinals of the World Championship for the first time in history. They lost the semifinals to Denmark and the third place playoff to France by a narrow one-point margin.
Building on this historic achievement, Portugal delivered one of the tournament’s most remarkable performances, with three of its players earning spots in the 2025 IHF Men’s World Championship All-Star team—comprising nearly a third of the prestigious 10-player selection:
In recognition of his historical achievements, Paulo Pereira won the title of “Coach of the Year” at Sports Gala organized by the National Sports Federation. He won as well the ‘’technical’’ award of the eighth edition of the Bento Pessoa National Awards, under the category of ‘’Entities of National Scope’’.
His distinctive ideas of using aggressive, all-in tactics have completely changed the course of the Portugal national team. He is also a psychology aficionado who relies on advanced motivational techniques to optimize the players' efficiency.
Paulo Pereira is a highly successful international handball coach with a career spanning over two decades and six countries:
He started his coaching career at a young age, leading the children's team of CD Portugal. In 1996, he became the head coach of the CPN club (A popular club in the vicinity of Porto) and later moved to FC Porto in 1999 as an assistant coach. He was promoted to head coach of FC Porto in the 2002/03 season, replacing Branislav Pokrajac. When he led FC Porto, the team won the championship in 2001/02, 2002/03, and 2003/04, the cup in 2005/06, the Super Cup in 2000/01, and the League Cup in 2003/04 and 2004/05.
In 2006, Pereira moved to the Spanish second-division club C.B. Cangas, with whom he finished sixth and eighth in Honor Plata.
In 2009, he became Angola's national head coach, leading the team to victory in the 2010 Women's Handball Africa Championship. He also coached the Atlético Sport Aviação (ASA) women's team in 2008 and CD Primeiro de Agosto from 2010 to 2013, leading them to win the Angola Women's Handball League Cup in 2011.
In 2013, Pereira took over the Tunisian women's national handball team, winning the 2014 Women's Handball Africa Championship (their first champion win in this tournament since 1976). In 2015, he coached the Tunisian club Espérance Sportive de Tunis.
In 2016, the Portuguese Handball Federation named him the new head coach for the Portugal national team, then extended his contract until the summer of 2023.
He is best known for leading his national team to their best place in history, reaching the sixth place at the EHF EURO 2020 tournament. A monumental achievement for a team that had not been qualified for the competition for 14 years and over seven times of qualification. He led the team to compete for the first time in the men's Olympic handball tournament at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, finishing in ninth place. In 2021, he qualified the team for the World Championship after 17 years of absence (2003) and led them to an all-time best tenth place.
From 2017 to 2019, he was the parallel coach of the Romanian club CSM Bucharest, winning the 2018/19 EHF Challenge Cup.
In June 2022, he took over the Kuwaiti club Al Kuwait SC, winning the Asian Champions League in the same month.