Family fortunes: Bruno Lage happy to have brother assist Wolves’ rise

Look at Wolves go. They are this season’s most unlikely contenders for a top-four finish and could boost their chances on Sunday by winning at home to Leicester. Bruno Lage deserves high praise. So does the manager’s little brother.

Luis Nascimento, at 42 three years younger than his more prominent sibling, was one of the six backroom staff members brought to Molineux after Lage’s appointment in June. Lage had collaborated with each of them before but had never worked directly with his brother, whose career has largely mirrored his own.

Nascimento’s official title is Wolves’ senior professional development coach but he is nicknamed “Il Capitano” after Capitano Nascimento, the lead character of the 2007 Brazilian movie Tropa de Elite, about a no-nonsense policeman tasked with cleaning Rio de Janeiro of drug gangs before a visit by the pope.

“He is different to me, he is more serious,” says the jovial Lage, explaining the tag was coined by Carlos Carvalhal, under whom they served as assistant manager: Lage at Swansea and Sheffield Wednesday between 2015 and 2018 and then, in 2019, Nascimento at Rio Ave in Portgual.

“He has had the same pathway as me,” says Lage about his brother. “I went to Benfica in 2004, he went in 2005. We worked together but not in the same teams. When I was at the under-15s, he was working with the under-11s. But the good thing is we shared experiences between us. Then, after I went to Dubai [in 2012], and then also with Carlos, if I was doing something new – a new exercise or idea – I would share with him and he would try it with the kids. Similarly, he would share experiences with me. After I left Carlos’s staff, Carlos invited him and it was very good. He is a top professional. When I came to