Joao Moutinho at 40: Braga midfielder's incredible longevity explained as he passes 1,150 professional appearances
As Joao Moutinho turns 40, Adam Bate looks at how the Portuguese midfielder manages to keep going as he embarks on his 23rd consecutive top-flight season in Europe; featuring insight from Carlos Carvalhal, his coach at Sporting and Braga, as well as the man himself
Monday 7 September 2026 22:22, UK
For Joao Moutinho, the first competitive game of the season came in late July away to Zeleznicar Pancevo of Serbia in Braga's UEFA Conference League qualifier. There is no rest for the veteran Portuguese midfielder. Still going and still going strong.
He played the full 90 minutes in the away leg of the tie against Dinamo Minsk in Bulgaria. He lasted the distance away to Austria Vienna too, before also playing the whole match as Braga won the Derby do Minho against Vitor Guimaraes just days later.
Moutinho turns 40 years old on the eighth day of September and he is already nine games into yet another season having played his final game as a thirtysomething away to Alverca on Saturday. Braga won. Moutinho played the entire game. Of course he did.
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He passed the 1,000 game mark as long ago as 2024 and has now made at least 25 appearances for his club in 23 consecutive seasons. There were 56 games for him last season, the seventh time he has passed the half-century mark in a campaign.
Moutinho is a supremely gifted footballer, a European champion with Portugal and a title winner in France as well as his home country. He went on to become arguably Wolves' greatest-ever Premier League player during his five seasons in England.
But his longevity is becoming his most remarkable trait. Braga are already the fifth club he has brought up a century of games for, and could yet become the fourth different club he has represented at least 200 times. How is he able to keep going?
There was a clue when visiting the training ground to interview him back in his Wolves days. Every other player had left. Moutinho was having an ice bath and a massage. "I like playing more than training so I try to be fit to play," he explained that afternoon.
"I do what I need to do to stay fit. Train well. I eat well. I drink water and hydration drinks. I rest when I need to rest. I come to training every day as if it is the first day. They are small things but they make a difference." For Moutinho, this was as natural as breathing.
"I work a lot in the gym on injury prevention. This is important too. You have to believe in this work. You cannot just do it because you do it. You have to recognise that if you do this it is good for your body and it will give you something extra that will then help you."
Carlos Carvalhal is perhaps better placed than anyone to explain Moutinho's endurance. He coached him at Sporting when he was an emerging player and again at Braga 14 years later. "I do not remember any kind of injury," Carvalhal tells Sky Sports.
"He is a guy who knows his body exactly, he knows the limits." When it comes to his footballing brain, however, those limits are not so obvious. Carvalhal talks of an in-built GPS and how even when he was a youngster Moutinho was his conductor on the pitch.
"He played in a different position. At that time, he was an offensive midfielder. At Braga, we put him as a number six. We thought that was the best position for him now because he is not young any more. But he still understands everything about the game."
The touch remains immaculate, the decision-making spot on. Physically, the Portuguese league is perhaps a better environment for him now than the cut and thrust of the Premier League but he is able to use his vast experience to get through games.
"He anticipates everything. He balances everything." For Carvalhal, he was key. "He was unbelievable, fantastic." And as a Braga man, the coach has been following him even since he himself left. "Last season it was the same, another fantastic season again."
The minutes are being managed more than they used to be. Moutinho is becoming something of a Thursday night specialist for Braga. Not that he likes it. "He is still frustrated if the coach pulls him out after 75 minutes. He wants to play all the games."
That chimes with what team-mates have always said. Ruben Neves once called him the most competitive man he had met. Putting that comment to Moutinho at Wolves' training ground, he replied: "Years ago, it was worse. I wouldn't talk to my family [after a defeat]."
Moutinho explained: "I don't like to lose, no matter what I am playing. Football, tennis, head tennis, no matter what. If I am playing, I am playing to win. If I am not playing to win, I don't want to play. There needs to be something that moves you, that inspires you.
"I think it is good for the spirit to have that mentality. You cannot be different when it comes to the small things. Play to win something every day. If you live like that every day then, of course, at the weekend you are going to be winning." That mentality remains.
But for how long? Moutinho's latest contract is up at the end of the season but that was the case last year and the year before that. "We do not know when he will stop," says Carvalhal, smiling. "Because if he stays playing at this level, it is not a question of age."
He adds: "It is a question of performance and how you deal with this. He deals with it fantastically. Some play at 40 but not at the level of Moutinho. He is playing at the full level all the time. If he does another season like last season, I believe he will play on."
Braga's next game is against Estrela on Thursday. Their European campaign resumes in Copenhagen next month, days after facing one of Moutinho's old clubs Sporting. History would suggest he will be fit and ready to go. "It is unbelievable, something unique."
