In 2018, the club where he played, Sporting de Braga, gave him the challenge: to be a beach soccer player-coach. Success was immediate: Bruno Torres won three European Championships, two Mundialitos, six National Championships, three Super Cups and five Portuguese Cups.
He won everything possible, but was defeated by an administrative decision. In 2024, Paraná Braga ended with the Beach Football Section and it was at that time that the now national team coach valued the bet he made on his studies, which allowed him to have a plan B for a career he knew was uncertain. He graduated in Physical Education and Sports, showing the same commitment to the role of teacher, fitness instructor or worker in a gym.
Son of former player and coach José Alberto Torres, Bruno inherited his father’s passion for football… the one played on naked fields and lawns until the age of 26, in the Districts of Porto (to be able to study during the day), and the one played on the beach sand. Around the age of 14, it became more comfortable to play barefoot on the beaches of Póvoa de Varzim. I organized trips and collections with friends so I could go to summer tournaments in Portugal and Spain.
In 2006, he accepted Pinto da Costa’s challenge to be the face of FC Porto’s beach soccer project and thus created the lever for a successful career. He also played for V. Guimarães and Sp. Braga, but he never managed to live solely and exclusively from the modalitynor when he emigrated to represent Barcelona, AS Roma, Lokomotiv Moscow, Lignano Sabbiadoro, Besiktas, Alanya, Seferihisar Cittaslow.
He was one of the first to be called up to the national team and, since joining, he has not left the squad, having become captain of Portugal and lifting two World Champion trophies (2015 and 2019). He played 355 games, scored 31 goals and, in 2020, in an interview with MaisFutebol, he defined himself as follows: “When we talk about Torres, we talk about a career of a lot of work, a lot of dedication and a lot of sacrifice.”
At the beginning of Pedro Proença’s mandate, in conversation with DN, Bruno Torres challenged the president of the Portuguese Football Federation to take the missing step in the construction of a “sand field in the City of Football”. The former international defended that the FPF’s work was being “well done”, but it was necessary to deal with the seasonality of the sport and, therefore, he defended the idea of having covered stadiums, to be able to play all year round. “Beach soccer has to do double or triple the amount to keep winning and keep growing,” he also said.
Announced on March 24 in the role of national team coach, he promised to “follow up on a huge legacy left” by Mário Narciso, who left command of the quinas team after 13 years, many of them with Bruno Torres on the field. The first test of the Bruno Torres era will be the Acapulco Beach Soccer Cupfrom April 5 to 13, not Mexico.
isaura.almeida@dn.pt
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