Joao Moutinho Turns 40 With Over 1,150 Appearances, and He Was Still Having Ice Baths After Training When Everyone Else Had Gone Home

• Joao Moutinho turned 40 on 8 September and has already made nine appearances for Braga this season, passing 1,150 professional games along the way.
• His coach Carlos Carvalhal says he cannot recall Moutinho ever picking up a serious injury, crediting a body he “knows exactly” and a nightly routine built around ice baths, massages and hydration.
• Moutinho is a European champion with Portugal, a title winner in France with Monaco, and is regarded as one of Wolves’ greatest-ever Premier League players from his five seasons in England.

While Teammates Went Home, Moutinho Stayed Behind for an Ice Bath and a Massage

Joao Moutinho’s first competitive game of this season came in late July, away to Zeleznicar Pancevo of Serbia in a Conference League qualifier for Braga. He played the full 90 minutes. There has been no rest for him.

He lasted the distance in the away leg against Dinamo Minsk in Bulgaria. He played every minute away to Austria Vienna. Days later he played the whole match again as Braga won the Derby do Minho against Vitoria Guimaraes. Then, just before turning 40, he played every minute of a win away to Alverca, his last appearance as a man still in his thirties.

Moutinho turned 40 on 8 September. He is already nine games into the new season. Of course he played every one of them.

Passing 1,150 Games and Still Going

Moutinho passed the 1,000-appearance mark as long ago as 2024 and has now made at least 25 appearances for his club in 23 consecutive seasons. He played 56 games last season alone, the seventh time in his career he has passed 50 appearances in a single campaign.

He is a European champion with Portugal and a title winner in France with Monaco, on top of a league title at home in Portugal. He went on to become one of Wolves’ greatest-ever Premier League players across five seasons at Molineux. Braga are already the fifth club for whom he has passed a century of appearances, and he could yet reach 200 games for a fourth different club.

The trophies stretch back across two decades. Moutinho won three straight Primeira Liga titles with Porto between 2011 and 2013, the first of those as part of a treble with the Europa League and the Taca de Portugal. He added a first Ligue 1 title with Monaco in the 2016-17 season, the same campaign that carried the club to the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in over a decade, following their 2004 run to the final. With Portugal, he featured in every game but one at Euro 2016, including the final win over France that delivered the country’s first ever major trophy. He had already passed 100 caps for his country before he ever kicked a ball for Wolves.

None of that explains how he is still doing this at 40. The answer starts somewhere smaller than a trophy cabinet.

At Wolves, Moutinho arrived from Monaco in 2018, straight after the club had won promotion back to the Premier League under Nuno Espirito Santo, and helped keep them there in the seasons that followed, playing a full 90 minutes far more often than most players his age were being asked to. Teammates half his age looked to him for the calm head in midfield, the same role Carvalhal now describes him filling at Braga years later.

An Ice Bath While Everyone Else Had Gone Home

Visiting Moutinho’s Wolves training ground years ago for an interview, every other player had already left for the day. Moutinho was still there, 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,” he said.

“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.”

“I Do Not Remember Any Kind of Injury”

Carlos Carvalhal has coached Moutinho twice, first as an emerging player at Sporting and again 14 years later at Braga, a gap that makes him well placed to explain the midfielder’s endurance. “I do not remember any kind of injury,” Carvalhal told Sky Sports. “He is a guy who knows his body exactly, he knows the limits.”

Moutinho’s footballing brain has proven just as durable as his body. Carvalhal describes an in-built GPS on the pitch, present even when Moutinho was a teenager playing as an attacking midfielder. At Braga, the position has changed. “We put him as a number six,” Carvalhal said. “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 precise, the decision-making sound. Physically, Portuguese football suits him better now than the pace of the Premier League once did, but Carvalhal says his experience carries him through matches that might otherwise ask too much of a 40-year-old body. “He anticipates everything. He balances everything,” Carvalhal said. “He was unbelievable, fantastic.” Carvalhal has kept following him from a distance even after leaving Braga himself. “Last season it was the same, another fantastic season again.”

A Competitive Streak That Never Faded

Braga now manage Moutinho’s minutes more than they used to. He does not appreciate it. “He is still frustrated if the coach pulls him out after 75 minutes. He wants to play all the games,” Carvalhal said.

Ruben Neves once called Moutinho the most competitive person he had met. Moutinho heard that comment in his Wolves days and did not disagree. “Years ago, it was worse. I wouldn’t talk to my family,” he said, of how he used to react to a defeat.

“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,” Moutinho said. “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.”

No End Date in Sight

Moutinho’s contract runs out at the end of this season, exactly as it did last year and the year before that. Braga face Estrela on Thursday, and their Conference League campaign resumes next month in Copenhagen, days after a fixture against Sporting, one of his former clubs.

“We do not know when he will stop,” Carvalhal said, smiling as he said it. “Because if he stays playing at this level, it is not a question of age. 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.”

Most footballers are managing their bodies out of the game entirely by 40, let alone starting a 23rd consecutive top-flight season in Europe. Moutinho’s answer to how he has avoided that fate has never involved a secret supplement or a specialist regime nobody else has thought of. It is closer to routine carried out with total consistency: the ice bath after the last player has left, the hydration, the gym work most players treat as optional once their legs start to go.

Outfield players who remain regular starters in a top European division past 40 are rare enough that each one tends to get written about individually, the way Moutinho is being written about now. Most defensive midfielders his age are coaching, punditry or long retired. Moutinho is instead in Copenhagen next month, in a Conference League group stage, still being asked by his own manager to come off after 75 minutes rather than the full 90 he clearly still believes he deserves.

Braga’s next European assignment will tell its own story, and so will the one after that. But on current evidence, betting against Moutinho making it look ordinary again would be a mistake. “It is unbelievable, something unique,” Carvalhal said.