António Ribeiro dos Reis was born in Lisbon on 19 July 1896 and died there on 3 December 1961. He was a Benfica player first, spending from 1914 to 1925 at the club, and was among the pioneers of the national side, taking part in the earliest years of Portuguese international football in the 1920s. He was also, briefly, in charge of the Portugal national team during that decade, at a time when players, selectors and journalists were often the same handful of men.

He coached Benfica on three separate occasions, and the club's records credit him with a longer association than any single span suggests. His first spell ran from September 1926 to 1929, opening with a 3-1 defeat by Belenenses on 12 September 1926; his second covered 1931 to 1934; and he returned a third time in 1953. Across the three he took charge of 137 matches, winning 81. He won the Campeonato de Lisboa in 1932/33 and, in his final spell, the Taça de Portugal of 1952/53, his last match a 5-1 win over Covilhã on 20 December 1953.

He belonged to a generation that treated coaching as one activity among several. Away from the touchline he was a referee, a club administrator and above all a journalist: in 1945, with Cândido de Oliveira, he founded A Bola, which became and remains the leading sports newspaper in Portugal. A national competition, the Taça Ribeiro dos Reis, was played in his memory between 1961 and 1971.