LJMU graduate Paulo to join Amorim at Man Utd

Congratulations to ex-PhD student Paulo Barreira on becoming the new lead sport scientist at Manchester United.

Paulo is set to join the Red Devils as part of Rúben Amorim’s backroom staff after the highly-rated Portuguese agreed to replace Head Coach Erik ten Hag.

Paulo was already an established football man when he came to Liverpool to work at Liverpool Football Club under Brendan Rogers.

LJMU’s reputation as one of the leading sport science centres in Europe and the first university in the world to run a degree in the discipline attracted Paulo to undertake his doctorate with us.

He completed his scholarship in 2017 with a PhD thesis on hamstring injury prevention.

Dr Mark Robinson, a reader in biomechanics in the LJMU Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Science, worked with Paulo on football injury evaluations.

“Paulo was a physio at Liverpool FC and worked with us at LJMU to rehabilitate some of their high profile players including Lucas Leiva who had a long term injury at the time. We predominately did isokinetic evaluations for them, which is essentially muscle strength assessment.

“He was always a very hard worker and fiercely determined to get his PhD despite having a very full on job over in Anfield. He was also embracing new approaches to both athlete monitoring and rehabilitation.

“Paulo continues to produce high quality research. One of his PhD papers on load monitoring in football has an impressive 118 citations.”

Dr Rebecca Murphy, director of the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, said: “It looks as if Paulo will be joining Rúben Amorim at Old Trafford, which is a proud moment for him and for us here at LJMU.”