Manoel Neto

Manoel Neto was born on July 3, 1978, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At age six, his family relocated to Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais state — the city where the foundational chapters of his martial arts story would unfold. That same year, Neto stepped onto the mat for the first time as a judoka, absorbing the grappling instincts and competitive discipline that would shape everything to follow.

Seven years later, at age 13 in 1991, Neto expanded his training by taking up Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The decision was driven in large part by his father, a devoted follower of combat sports who understood the value of the emerging art. His first BJJ instructor, Marcos Moreira, guided him steadily from white belt through purple belt, building the technical foundation that would define his trajectory. Neto remained in Belo Horizonte under Moreira's instruction until 2001 — a decade of development that prepared him for an entirely different world.

In 2001, Neto left Belo Horizonte and relocated to the northern region of Portugal, where Brazilian jiu-jitsu was still finding its footing. Despite the distance from Brazil, he maintained a strong connection to Nova Uniao, the affiliation he had aligned with before departing South America.

Two years after his arrival, in 2003, Neto launched his coaching career at a small martial arts gym in northern Portugal, positioning himself as one of the sport's genuine pioneers in the region. Around the same period, black belt Kleber Repolho, also affiliated with Nova Uniao, arrived in Porto and began teaching in the area. Though Neto was never formally a direct student under Repolho, their shared affiliation created a natural bond and a working relationship that proved significant. It was Repolho who promoted Neto to brown belt and, subsequently, to black belt — the latter awarded in November 2006.

Through his early coaching work and competitive presence, Neto established himself as a foundational figure for jiu-jitsu in northern Portugal, setting the stage for what would eventually become an internationally recognized program.

2006 was a defining year on multiple fronts. In the same year he received his black belt, Neto founded Team Manoel Neto and opened his own academy — a dedicated environment built on competition and continuous improvement. The philosophy was unambiguous from the start: develop athletes capable of performing at the sport's highest levels.

The results came quickly. Team Manoel Neto established itself as a consistent force on the Portuguese national jiu-jitsu circuit, building a winning culture that set the standard in the country. Neto led by example as a competitor, earning back-to-back Portuguese National Championship titles and two Portuguese Grand Slam Championship titles. On the international stage, he claimed bronze at the IBJJF European Open Championship at brown belt in 2006, then returned to the podium with another bronze at black belt Master 1 in 2012 — a testament to his competitive longevity. These results underscored his reputation not just as a practitioner, but as a coach with a proven system for producing results.

As Team Manoel Neto grew in size and ambition, the need for a larger, more professional facility became clear. In 2010, Neto partnered with strength and conditioning specialist Marcelo Sartori to co-found Academia Workout in northern Portugal. Spanning more than 1,000 m² of dedicated training space, the facility stands as one of the most substantial grappling installations in Europe — a resource few academies on the continent can match.

The combination of a world-class training environment and an elite competition program accelerated athlete development at a pace uncommon for a European academy. Pedro Ramalho, known as "Paquito," was among the first from the team to break through at the international level, becoming an early symbol of what the academy could produce. He was followed by a remarkable generation of talent that included Guilherme Jardim, Filipe Silva, André Schulze, and Hugo Barros, among others. Together, these athletes brought Team Manoel Neto to the attention of the global jiu-jitsu community, earning IBJJF World and European medals and titles, as well as podium finishes at the Abu Dhabi World Pro — an achievement that placed the academy in rare company among European programs.

On June 23, 2016, Team Manoel Neto officially rebranded as Focus Jiu-Jitsu. The decision to move away from the founder's personal name was a deliberate acknowledgment of how far the organization had grown. By that point, the affiliation encompassed 15 academies spread across Portugal — a scale that had long outgrown the identity of a single instructor's team.

The name "Focus" was chosen with intention, reflecting a quality Neto had always embodied as a competitor and consistently sought to instill as a core value within his program. The rebrand marked the organization's evolution into one of the most prominent and geographically widespread BJJ affiliations in Europe, while preserving the competitive culture that had defined it from the beginning.

Also in 2016, Neto received a formal tribute at Copa Buffalo in recognition of his contributions to the development of jiu-jitsu in Portugal — a community acknowledgment of the outsized role he played in transforming the sport's landscape over the preceding fifteen years. Focus Jiu-Jitsu operates with its headquarters rooted in northern Portugal, carrying forward the identity and standards that Neto established from his earliest days on the mats in Belo Horizonte.