Filipe Luis has become the first Monaco manager since Arsene Wenger in 1987 to win his opening three matches in charge, after guiding the French club to a faultless start.
The former Brazil international took charge of Monaco in June and has seen his side win every game since his appointment. The run began in the qualifying rounds of the Conference League, where Monaco recorded two victories over Polish club Gornik.
Those results secured a winning start to Luis’ tenure before Monaco turned their attention to domestic competition. Their first Ligue 1 fixture followed, with a meeting against Le Havre ending in another victory.
Monaco won that match by a single-goal margin, completing three victories from three matches under Luis. The sequence means the 39-year-old has matched a record that had stood at the club since Wenger’s first games in charge in 1987.
The achievement places Luis alongside one of the most significant figures in Monaco’s history. Wenger also began his time at the club with three consecutive wins, and no Monaco manager had repeated that opening run in the years since.
Luis’ early record has therefore provided an immediate positive response to his appointment. The club have negotiated their European qualifying ties successfully and then carried that momentum into Ligue 1, where the narrow win over Le Havre maintained their perfect record.
However, Monaco’s next two fixtures will present a considerably tougher test of that start. The schedule now brings matches against Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain, meaning Luis will face two of the most prominent opponents in French football after winning his first three games.
The victories over Gornik came in the Conference League qualifiers, while the success against Le Havre represented Monaco’s first win in the new Ligue 1 campaign. Taken together, those matches have given Luis the ideal competitive beginning to his managerial career at the club.
His side have not merely avoided defeat in their first three appearances; they have won all three, following the exact pattern required to equal Wenger’s achievement. The record was last set in 1987, when Wenger became the previous Monaco coach to win his first three matches in charge.
Luis now has the opportunity to extend the run, but the scale of the challenge is about to increase. Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain are next on the fixture list, and the outcome of those games will show whether Monaco can maintain the momentum that has taken their new manager into the club’s record books.
For now, though, Luis’ first weeks in charge have produced the strongest possible start: two European qualifying wins, a narrow Ligue 1 victory and a place beside Wenger in Monaco’s managerial history.
