Boston Legacy FC announce Filipa Patão as head coach

Sports

“I know that Boston fans are passionate about the city and their teams and I’m looking forward to building a new history with them.”

By Hayden Bird

June 25, 2025 | 7:45 AM

2 minutes to read

The Boston Legacy Football Club announced that Filipa Patão is set to become the first head coach in team history. Patão will join Boston in July, pending approval of a visa.

Patão, 36, has previously served as manager of Benfica’s women’s team in her native Portugal from 2020-2025. She led Benfica to five consecutive league titles in the Campeonato Nacional (the top Portuguese league), and orchestrated a run to the quarterfinals of the 2023-2024 UEFA Women’s Champions League (the best finish for a Portuguese team in competition history).

She will have an enormous task in Boston, as the club is set to make its NWSL debut in 2026 as an expansion team. Legacy FC will play its home games at Gillette Stadium for the inaugural season before moving to a rebuilt White Stadium, per the club’s plans.

“I’m very excited about going to Boston. I can’t wait to get to the city, meet all the people and start working,” Patão said in a statement released by the club on Wednesday morning. “The American league is extremely competitive and that’s one of the reasons I accepted this project: I like competition, difficulty, and getting the players to strive for more and better. To transform themselves and always demand more of themselves.

“I know that Boston fans are passionate about the city and their teams,” she added, “and I’m looking forward to building a new history with them.”

Legacy FC general manager Domè Guasch cited Patão’s qualities as being particularly valuable for a brand new team.

“Boston is a club where we want to develop both technical identity and have a clear style of play, but also we want a coach who thinks about more than just winning games,” Guasch said per the team statement. “Filipa is a coach I believe can help us build a great culture where players understand they will come here to grow and learn.”

With the coaching search settled, Guasch (and Patão) can now turn to the looming challenge of building a roster. Due to the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, there will be no expansion draft (as had previously been the custom in the NWSL). Instead, both of the 2026 expansion sides, Boston and Denver, will have access to additional allocation money.

Guasch said at a recent event in June that after the hiring of a head coach, there would be transfer news coming “on the player side,” and that “we also will have something in the coming weeks.”