🐎 After points record in Juarez, Martin Varini wants focus on his achievements, not his age
The 33-year-old talks haters, being a 'young coach' & what's next for Bravos in an exclusive interview.
When Martin Varini called some mentors and trusted advisers to share the news that he was up for a new job, the reception wasn’t exactly what he expected.
“Why are you going to go Juarez? Do you have other options?” he remembers being asked. “It’s a place where it hasn’t gone well for … anyone.”
The doubters weren’t entirely wrong. Heading into this season, the Borderplex club had secured a postseason place only once and never finished in the top 10 of the Liga MX table since joining in 2019. But those previous struggles and askance looks only made Varini want to take the FC Juarez job more. He was announced as the new manager in December, becoming the youngest Liga MX manager to ever start a season.
Juarez finished the Clausura in 9th with a club-record 24 points. On Sunday, Varini’s squad hosts Pumas in the 9-10 play-in game, hoping to secure the first of two victories that would put Los Bravos into the Liguilla proper for the first time ever.
“We had to bring in a lot of energy, a winning mentality to be able to change the conditions to get the results,” Varini told me in a Zoom call this week. “That’s the part that motivates me most about the project. Honestly, I’ve found myself at a club with a lot of desire to grow, a really lovely city as well.”
For many seasons, fans in Juarez, El Paso and the surrounding areas fairly asked questions about just how badly the team wanted to grow. While there were occasional links with a big-name player or efforts from Liga MX has-beens to revive the club, nothing got the team into the postseason.
The team had tried with established managers like Tuca Ferretti, Luis Fernando Tena and Hernan Cristante. Once again without a manager after a disappointing Apertura, it opted for an injection of youth rather than going with another old hand. Himself a man of just 36, sporting director Fran Sanchez thought about an Uruguayan coach three years his junior who he’d crossed paths with in Spain as Real Valladolid’s sporting director.
After leaving Paulo Pezzolano’s staff at Valladolid, Varini had led Defensor Sporting to the 2023 Copa Uruguay, then won more than half his matches during a spell with Athletico Paranaense in the cut-throat Brazilian league.
“We decided to bet on youth, but it wasn’t a bet without fundamentals. The truth is the sporting president and front office studied deeply,” Alejandra De la Vega, the leader of FC Juarez’s ownership group, told TV Azteca this month. “There are people who already have worked with him and knew his methodology, his way of working. We bet big on him.
“Ultimately, I think we’re growing toward finding what the Bravo DNA is, I think Martin personifies it.”
While the team now sees its identity in the current coach, it wasn’t seen as a slam-dunk hire. Far from the country’s capital and the media outlets based there, Varini’s arrival in Juarez was generally reduced to one segment on the debate shows and headlines that included just one word: Young.
There was no shortage of pundits - many of them after a Liga MX manager job of their own - who saw an unfamiliar 33-year-old face show up to coach Bravos and scoffed.
“It doesn’t really bother me,” Varini said, underlining that his accomplishments with past teams is what he puts value on rather than doing remarkable things for a coach his age. “Of course, many people in Mexico don’t consume South American soccer. They’re not up to date on what might be the best leagues in the world. I, of course, was very clear on where I came from, on the position I was taking in this new market that I wanted to be in.
“It could’ve gone poorly, and those people would’ve been right, but unfortunately for them, I think, they were wrong because we had an historic tournament, we did an excellent job here in Juarez and surely will be able to keep growing in Mexican soccer.”
That starts Sunday at the Estadio Olímpico when Juarez hosts Pumas in the play-in. After seeing a team that had conceded 36 goals in 17 matches last tournament, Varini focused on establishing a defensive base while still trying to have a team that pushed forward to create scoring chances.
There were many jokes when Varini suggested after a 4-0 loss early in the season to Club América that his team actually hadn’t allowed that many dangerous chances, but Bravos ended the regular season having conceded just 21 goals in 17 matches - as good or better than all but three teams in the league.
He did it, often, with Mexican talent. Mexican-American left back Ralph Orquin and Juarez homegrown Denzell Garcia, a right back who slides into the midfield when Juarez has the ball, have been among the most important players.
“We knew they’d conceded a lot of goals in the previous season and it was something to correct, but we tried to do it with collective soccer - not overloading the defense with not conceding but a collective effort from the team to work to be able to be a solid team that wouldn’t concede and be able to sustain the game defensively,” Varini said.
The approach not only unlocked something in some of the Mexican talents, but also boosted Brazilian midfielder Guilherme Castilho, whose four goals led the team this season even as he contributes to helping the back line. New signings also gave the team a jolt, with winger Madson notably adding three goals and a pair of assists after his February debut.
Varini is careful not to overpromise but hopes to continue to carry out a project at Juarez that will continue to reach the postseason and perhaps start to be capable of direct Liguilla contention.
“We’ll prepare to try to give the process continuity,” he said. “We don’t want the 2025 Clausura to be a sporadic situation in Juarez’s history, but rather that Juarez get used to being able to play in these types of competitions.”
First, though, it’s Sunday’s play-in, when Varini looks to keep taking Jaurez to heights it has not yet reached and become the first manager to make things truly work out on the border.