Dr Mario Borges

Mário Borges conducts his research in areas such as the education and development of coaches, sports migration, and notational analysis, bringing these dimensions together to understand how coaching evolves across diverse social and cultural contexts. His work has focused on the perceptions of migrant coaches regarding recruitment processes, motivations, and mobility experiences, as well as on the patterns and international circulation networks of Portuguese coaches. He has also examined how foreign coaches are represented in the media and analysed the perspectives of foreign and British coaches on immigration to the United Kingdom. His interest in intercultural competences in sport led him to explore the role of cultural intelligence in coaching, a line of research supported by the UEFA Research Grant (2017/18), through which he identified intercultural training needs among football coaches. Within the scope of the FIFA Research Scholarship (2022/23), he designed and evaluated an intercultural training programme for coaches, reinforcing the importance of preparing professionals for multicultural environments in contemporary sport. In parallel, he has developed studies on coach learning and professional development, as well as on passing networks in team sports, particularly football and handball, seeking to understand how teams organise themselves and interact in competition.