Football clubs are not built on badges or slogans. They are built by the people who arrive first at the pitch on Al Ain Road and leave last, who plan a session on a Tuesday night so it pays off on a Saturday afternoon, and who tell a player the truth when praise would be easier.
That is the group we want you to meet.
Legentus FC competes in the UAE Second Division League, the third tier of Emirati football, against opponents like Precision FC, Baynounah SC, Al Ittihad, Royal FC and Palm City. We closed the 2025/26 campaign with 30 points from 26 matches — eight wins, six draws, twelve defeats, 40 goals scored — a record we are honest about and determined to improve, as the full division standings show. Ambition here is not a marketing line. It is a gap between where we are and where we intend to be, and the staff below exist to close it.
Between them, our technical, performance and operations team has worked in Italy, Romania, Poland, Moldova, Hungary, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Libya, South Africa, the United States and across the UAE. That is not a coincidence. We hired for scars, not CVs.
Michele Bon — Head Coach
Nationality: Italian · Born: 22 November 1972, Palmanova, Italy · Licence: UEFA Pro · Education: Coverciano
Michele Bon has spent more than twenty years learning the game in places where results arrive quickly or you don’t stay. That is exactly why he leads our first team.
He holds the UEFA Pro Licence — the highest coaching qualification in European football, requiring a minimum of 360 hours of formal education and prior head-coach experience — and he is a graduate of Coverciano, the Italian federation’s technical centre often called the university of football. He also speaks Italian, English, Spanish and Romanian, which matters far more than it sounds in a dressing room built from six or seven nationalities.
His route to Dubai reads like a map of modern football. He began on the technical staff at Udinese’s youth setup in 2003, then spent a formative decade in Romania: athletic coach at Sportul Studentesc, then at Unirea Urziceni through the club’s rise to the Liga I title, then assistant at FC Timisoara, FCSB and FCM Targu Mures. He worked as athletic coach at Wisla Krakow, took his first senior roles in the Gulf with Al-Nasr’s U23 side in Dubai and Al-Muharraq in Bahrain, served as technical director at South China in Hong Kong, and coached in Hungary at Balmazujvaros before returning to Romania with FC Voluntari, Petrolul Ploiesti and Csikszereda Miercurea Ciuc. In November 2021 he was appointed head coach of Moldovan side Zimbru Chisinau. His UAE work has since included Emirates Club, and Masfout Club — the details are documented on his Transfermarkt manager profile and his Wikipedia career overview.
Read that list again and one thing stands out: he has been a fitness coach, an assistant, a technical director and a number one. He understands every chair in the building, which makes him unusually good at running a staff, not just a team. On the training ground, he asks for the unglamorous things — defensive shape held for ninety minutes, transitions rehearsed until they are boring, professional standards that do not fluctuate with the scoreline.
Sources: Transfermarkt · Wikipedia · Wikidata · UEFA coaching licences
Brayan Baldin — Assistant Coach
Brayan Baldin serves as Assistant Coach for Legentus, bringing a comprehensive background in both technical coaching and football operations to the staff. Operating between Udine and Dubai, he holds a UEFA B Coaching License and is an FIGC Licensed Sport Director, having completed his executive training at Coverciano. Additionally, he holds a Master’s degree in Sports Management.
Having previously managed the Legentus first team as head coach, Baldin provides the current staff with first-hand leadership experience and an in-depth understanding of the squad’s internal dynamics. This prior tenure equips him with a highly practical perspective on matchday management and tactical adjustments. In his day-to-day role, he assists the head coach in running training sessions, conducts detailed opposition and individual player analysis, and oversees matchday organization to ensure seamless preparation.
In addition to his on-pitch responsibilities, Baldin’s background in scouting and sports management allows him to function as a vital operational link between the coaching staff and the recruitment department. His dual expertise ensures that player evaluations are carefully aligned with both the team’s immediate tactical requirements and the club’s broader strategic goals.
Sources: LinkedIn · Instagram · Coverciano — FIGC
Benedic Tinashe Mutodza “Lion” — Goalkeeper Coach
Based: Dubai, UAE · Specialism: Goalkeeping, grassroots to professional
They call him Lion, and after one session you understand why the name stuck.
Benedic Tinashe Mutodza has built his entire career on one position, which is precisely what a goalkeeper department needs. Since February 2023 he has been head coach at Lion GK Goalkeeper Academy in Dubai, based in Arabian Ranches 2 and working with every age group. His published coaching focus is refreshingly concrete: fundamentals, handling, passing and distribution, dealing with crosses, and one-versus-one situations — the moments that actually decide matches.
His grounding came in South Africa. He spent four years developing keepers at BBK Goalkeeper Academy in Cape Town, and worked with Wanderers FC Langa from 2022 to 2024, coaching senior goalkeepers in the ABC Motsepe League and SAB League while building the junior group beneath them. He has also coached at Hannover Park FC and Young Bafana Soccer, per his public career profile.
That combination — grassroots patience plus senior league pressure — is why our keepers improve. He works shot-stopping and footwork, but he spends just as long on positioning, communication with the back line, and playing out under pressure, because a modern goalkeeper who cannot pass is a defender short. Above all, he builds confidence, the one attribute a goalkeeper cannot fake.
Source: Benedic Tinashe Mutodza — LinkedIn
Francesco Guerra — Fitness and Performance Coach
Based: Dubai, UAE · Languages: Italian, English, Spanish · Specialism: Athletic performance, return-to-play, functional assessment
Francesco Guerra does not guess. He measures.
Guerra came to Legentus from the performance industry rather than the touchline, and it shows in how our physical programme runs. He is a performance coach with SPS Performance in Dubai and previously spent eighteen months at Recovery Island in the UAE, where his listed work covered sport-specific performance optimisation, biomechanical testing with VALD force plates and dynamometry, velocity-based training using Vitruve encoder technology, structured return-to-play progressions after injury or physiotherapy, and full functional assessments to find each athlete’s weak link.
Translated into football terms: every player at this club has a physical profile, not a hunch. We know who is asymmetrical, who is losing force production, who is ready for ninety minutes and who is ready for sixty. In a Second Division season played through UAE heat and a congested fixture list, that data is the difference between a squad that peaks in March and a squad that empties out.
Guerra handles pre-season loading, in-season conditioning, mobility, injury-risk management and the rehab bridge back into full training. He is also the staff member most likely to overrule the rest of us — and he should be.
Sources: LinkedIn · Instagram — @frague_performance
Felice Laterza — Team Manager
Based: Dubai, UAE · Specialism: Football operations, logistics, coordination
Every club has one person whose absence would be noticed within an hour. At Legentus, that person is Felice Laterza.
Laterza’s background is not conventional football, and that is the point. He spent roughly a decade in Dubai hospitality operations — including full management of a restaurant from 2018 to 2021 and food and beverage management roles from 2014 — which is to say he has spent years running high-pressure services where the schedule, the staffing and the supply chain must all land at once, in a foreign language, with no second attempt. He then retrained as a developer through an intensive full-stack programme, worked as a web developer at InfoCamere in Milan, and served as an analyst at Deloitte Consulting in Milan before returning to Dubai.
Operations, data and systems. Applied to football, that means training logistics that actually work, matchday plans that account for travel and kick-off times, clean communication between coaches, players and management, and administration that is done before anyone has to chase it.
The Team Manager role is the least visible job at the club and one of the most consequential. Because Laterza handles it properly, our coaches coach and our players play. Nothing else gets in the way.
Source: Felice Laterza — LinkedIn
One Staff, One Standard
There is no hierarchy of importance here, only a division of labour.
The head coach sets the football. The assistants turn it into sessions and analysis. The goalkeeper coach prepares a position group that plays a different sport from the ten in front of it. The performance coach decides who is physically capable of executing the plan. The team manager makes sure all of it happens on time, every week, without drama.
What connects them is a standard rather than a philosophy statement. Be early. Be prepared. Tell players the truth. Compete for everything, including in training. Represent Legentus FC in a way that makes the badge worth wearing.
We are a Dubai club with clear ambitions in the UAE Second Division: develop players who move up, compete with genuine professionalism at every level, and build an academy pathway that feeds the first team rather than sitting beside it. That will be earned on training pitches long before it shows up in a league table.
Legentus FC Dubai — Staff List 2026
| Role | Key credential | |
|---|---|---|
| Michele Bon | Head Coach | UEFA Pro Licence, Coverciano graduate |
| Brayan Baldin | Assistant Coach | Coverciano Sport Director Licence, MSc Sports Management |
| Benedic Tinashe Mutodza “Lion” | Goalkeeper Coach | Head Coach, Lion GK Goalkeeper Academy |
| Francesco Guerra | Fitness / Performance Coach | VALD, force plate and velocity-based training specialist |
| Felice Laterza | Team Manager | Football operations, logistics and analysis |
Note: if
Want to train with us? Legentus FC runs open trials for ambitious players across Dubai. Reach the club at support@legentusfc.org or visit us on Al Ain Road (E66), Dubai. Learn more about the club or follow the squad on Instagram.
