In profile: The lowdown on incoming Wolves boss Cesar Peixoto

To say Cesar Peixoto is arriving in English football an unknown would be something of an understatement.

Not since Fosun’s first managerial appointment, Walter Zenga, has a selection ever been so leftfield.

Even then, Zenga was a former Italy international who had made more than 300 appearances for Inter Milan.

Peixoto’s international career with Portugal consisted of a few minutes off the bench at the end of a friendly defeat to Brazil in 2008.

Where the incoming Wolves boss and Zenga do compare is the speed in which they change jobs.

This will be Peixoto’s ninth appointment in a managerial career which only began a little over seven years ago and includes two spells at two different clubs.

The encouraging news, from a Wolves perspective, is that comfortably his best and most consistent work has come at the club he is leaving, Gil Vicente.

Last season, under Peixoto’s guidance, they achieved one of the best finishes in their history, sixth in the Portuguese First Division.

The 16 months he has been in charge of the club, based in the northern town of Barcelos, ranks as easily the longest of his coaching career so far. Prior to being appointed in February last year, he had never lasted more than 30 matches in the same role.

A product of Vitor Guimaraes’ academy, Peixoto began his career in the fourth division as a left winger with Cacadores Taipas before getting his big break in the top flight with Belenenses.

From there, he joined Porto, where Jose Mourinho was just starting to make his name.

But a serious knee injury, suffered in a Champions League fixture against Marseille, hampered his progress and meant he was not part of the team which became European champions just a few months later.

After loan moves to Guimaraes and Espanyol and having been converted into a left-back, he joined Braga in 2007 and two years later moved to Benfica, with whom he won the league and cup double in 2010.

Peixoto would finish his playing career with a two-and-half year stint at Gil Vicente, before retiring in 2014.

His first move into management came nearly five years later when he joined Varzim in the Portuguese Second Division, helping them avoid relegation.

Brief stints at Coimbra, Chaves and Moreirense, which lasted a combined total of just 33 matches followed, before two spells at Pacos Ferreira, suffering relegation at the end of the second in 2023.

After a year out, Peixoto returned to management and Moreirense in the summer of 2024 but lasted only seven months before being sacked.

He joined Gil Vicente just a few weeks later, from which point his career has been on an upward trajectory which Wolves will now hope continues.