Neel Shelat looks at the Sporting Director who is moving to Manchester City and oversaw the successful managerial reign of Rúben Amorim, the incoming Manchester United head coach
We are still a couple of months away from 2025, but some of the biggest moves of the year might already have been announced. In early October, Manchester City announced that director of football Txiki Begiristain will leave the club after the 2024/25 season, having joined them about 12 years ago. He will be replaced by Hugo Viana, who will formally take over the role in the summer but “will collaborate with Txiki in the preceding months to ensure a smooth transition”, per a club statement.
While there were rumours of Begiristain’s departure circulating for quite a while, this announcement still rather came out of the blue. Viana’s name was hardly ever linked with City previously, but his track record at Sporting CP should show why the English champions decided to appoint him.
Career Overview
Unlike the vast majority of head coaches, not all sporting directors are necessarily former players. Some of them come from more business-focused backgrounds, and even among the former players, a decent chunk do not have a great deal of top-level experience to speak of. However, that was not the case for Viana.
Playing Days
Born in Barcelos, Viana began his youth career with local club Gil Vicente. Around the age of 14, he was picked up by Sporting CP. He quickly rose up the ranks in Lisbon and enjoyed an excellent breakout season at the senior level three years later, earning a reputation as one of the best young talents in Europe.
Still a teenager in 2002, Viana was signed by Newcastle United for a club-record €12 million. He never really lived up to expectations at Tyneside or indeed elsewhere, going on to spend a significant portion of his career on short loan stints around Spain and Portugal. Nevertheless, he managed to register 29 appearances for his senior national team over the years, participating in a couple of World Cups and the Euros before a three-year stint in the Middle East and the end of his playing career.
All things considered, the Portuguese midfielder had a pretty good playing career, having featured for top clubs such as Sporting, Newcastle, Valencia, and Braga. He has since spoken of the value of having these experiences in his current role, as he can better empathise with the players he works with as a director of football.
A Slow Start
Less than a year after hanging up his boots, Viana took on a role as the director of football at Os Belenenses. There is little that can be said of his work there, though, as he left midway through his first season at the club in November 2017. At the end of the 2017/18 campaign, Os Belenenses would undergo a messy split between the SAD (Sociedade Anónima Desportiva – effectively the company that manages the professional teams of clubs in Portugal) and the club itself.
Viana’s next job would be at the club that launched his playing career, Sporting CP. When he joined in the summer of 2018, his initial role was director of international relations, though he would be promoted to director of football before the end of the season.
At the time, Sporting were in quite a rough spot. They were in the midst of an extremely long league title drought which stretched back to 2002, and fan frustrations were boiling over. At the end of the 2017/18 season, a group of ultras attacked some of the coaching staff and players. Criminal action would be taken against some of them in the long run, but many of the players naturally decided to leave the club after the incident.
Financially, the club were not in the strongest of positions at the time either. They were just about recovering from a period of mismanagement in the early 2010s, but they certainly could not afford to splurge or undertake a big rebuilding project. The director of football’s job involved generating revenue just as much as spending, as player trading has contributed to over a third of the club’s income in recent seasons.
Viana’s first full season as Sporting’s director of football did not go too well either. His first head coaching appointment, Silas, lasted less than half a year and averaged well under two points per game, leading to the club’s first finish outside the top three in seven years. Viana’s first set of player transfers didn’t have a particularly great impact, but he did make perhaps the most pivotal signing of his career so far before the end of the campaign.
Recent Success
In March 2020, Sporting CP paid Braga €10m to bring in head coach Rúben Amorim – the third most expensive football coach transfer fee at the time. He hadn’t even completed a full season as a head coach at the time but did have a long-standing relationship with Viana having been teammates for Braga and Portugal.
The duo achieved instant success. In his first full season at the club, Amorim led Sporting to their first league title in 19 years and won the league cup to boot. The top three players in his squad in terms of goal involvements were all new signings, as Viana’s work in the window also played a big part in an unforgettable season.
While Sporting have not been able to get a streak going in terms of domestic titles as competition from the likes of Porto and Benfica remains extremely stiff, they have added a few more honours to their collection in recent years. At the same time, they have consistently competed in the Champions League and Europa League.
Most impressively from Viana’s standpoint, he has overseen all of this success while managing to generate an aggregate profit of around €225m since taking over. In so doing, he has helped significantly improve the club’s financial standing to the point that they can proactively invest now if they so desire.
Transfer Approach
Over the years, Sporting’s transfer strategy under Viana shows some interesting patterns and trends worth digging into. One thing that seems to have stayed consistent throughout, though, is the Portuguese director’s impressive negotiation skills. He has a reputation for being a tough negotiator who consistently goes in and gets what he wants, as is evidenced by the big-money deals he has struck over the years.
In his first full season as the club’s director of football, Viana negotiated the club-record sale of Bruno Fernandes to Manchester United for a fee of around €65m. In fact, he has overseen five of the club’s six most expensive departures, thereby bringing in the money needed to be able to afford to adequately replace such stars. Thus, his ability to negotiate big sales has been the key to his success in Lisbon.
Going Big on Key Replacements
As mentioned above, Sporting have been a club who have relied on player trading to generate profits and improve their financial status in recent years. Such sides often look to replace big departures by looking for bargains, but the Portuguese giants’ standing and positive financial trend have meant that their hands have not been entirely tied. Under Viana, they have made 11 of their 12 most expensive signings. Of course, part of this can be attributed to the ever-inflating player valuations in the transfer market, but Viana’s willingness to go big on key replacements is just as much of a factor.
The key to his success is his proactivity. Viana is not one to wait around for star players to leave before going on the search for replacements. Instead, he understands the fact that Sporting’s best players are always going to attract interest from top clubs around the big five European leagues – indeed, their business model relies on it – so he is happy to look for and even sign successors beforehand.
For example, after Sporting’s title-winning season in 2020/21, they spent a club-record fee of around €25m to sign Manuel Ugarte. He had only spent six months in Portugal at the time having joined Famalicão from Fénix in January 2021, but he stood out as a ball-winning midfielder with exceptional defensive quality (as we can see using TransferLab’s time machine feature).
Amorim’s first-choice midfield pairing in the league-winning season included a ball-winner in João Palhinha and a more box-to-box player in Matheus Nunes. Both of them stayed put that summer, allowing Ugarte to only make 10 league starts in his first season in Lisbon. However, when they left for English Premier League sides Fulham and Wolverhampton Wanderers respectively in 2022 for a combined fee of over €70m, Ugarte seamlessly slotted into the side alongside Hidemasa Morita (effectively Nunes’ replacement after a €3.5m move from Santa Clara). The Uruguayan international went on to have a great campaign in 2022/23, earning a move to Paris Saint-Germain for €60m which made him the second most expensive departure in the club’s history.
Viana’s next signing in the position was Morten Hjulmand, who joined in the summer of 2023 for just under €20m from Lecce, making him the third-most expensive signing in the club’s history. He too profiled as a defensively outstanding ball-winning midfielder, and has since gone on to impress in Portugal.
A similar flow of transfers can be seen in the striker position as well. Viana’s first hit in this respect was Braga’s Paulinho for €16m in January 2021 (a club-record fee at the time) as he registered 20 league goal involvements in his first season and a half at the club. However, he was rather phased out in the 2022/23 season as he barely started a third of Sporting’s league games, also suffering a couple of injury issues.
In the summer of 2023, there was a huge opportunity in the market after Coventry City failed to win promotion to the English Premier League through the playoffs. Having registered 53 league goal involvements in the previous two seasons, Viktor Gyökeres couldn’t possibly have done any more to earn a big move.
Clubs from around Europe were naturally clamouring for his signature, but it was Sporting who won out in the end by agreeing to a transfer fee of €24m – the second-highest they’ve ever paid for a player. The Swedish international instantly tore up the Primeira Liga with 29 goals and 10 assists in his debut campaign as Sporting won another league title, while he garnered further attention from Europe’s top clubs. Once again, Viana was in no rush to sell and gladly let him stay through 2024, though someone will quite possibly offer an amount matching or close to his €100m release clause soon.
In the meantime, he has already signed a potential replacement. This summer, Sporting parted with €19m to sign FC Nordsjaelland’s Conrad Harder. Although he has barely played over 1,500 minutes at the senior level so far, he has shown very impressive glimpses of being a strong goalscorer, with elite levels of xG and goals per 90 in his Superliga season.
Even as Viana heads on his way out, Sporting look set to continue to reap the fruits of his proactive succession planning.
Trusting Established Markets
An interesting aspect of Sporting’s transfer business under Viana is their reliance on established markets. More than a third of their signings have come from Portugal, with the figure going over 50% in the Iberian Peninsula as a whole.
Although he initially returned to the club as the director of international sporting relations, Viana relied on the domestic market particularly heavily in his first few windows as their director of football. Three of his six permanent signings in the summer of 2020 were from within the league, while two others were from Spain. Each of the next six also came from Portugal, including the likes of Paulinho and Ugarte, which leverages other Portuguese clubs’ talent ID effectively while also ensuring the players have adapted well before moving to Sporting.
Even when he looked abroad, Viana initially did not venture beyond the major European leagues. In the summer of 2022, only three of Sporting’s nine signings were players already in Portugal. Five of the others came from big five league clubs such as Barcelona, Manchester City, and Juventus. The list of names included Pedro Porro and Trincão.
Taking Chances on Top Clubs’ Rejects
The world’s very best clubs naturally have great academies thanks to their ability to attract talent, but most of them barely rely on graduates to make a telling impact in the first team. Such outfits have the financial capacity and competitive obligation to bring in the very best players in the world, so their first team squads are almost entirely composed of signings with little room for academy graduates. As a result, the vast majority of their academy graduates end up having to leave to look for regular senior football, having earned little such experience with the club in question. The lack thereof certainly hinders their market value, presenting a market opportunity for most teams that are just below the very elite level.
Sporting have attempted to capitalise on this on a couple of occasions in recent years. In his first summer as the club’s director of football, Viana signed Pedro Porro on a two-year loan with an option to buy from Manchester City. The Spanish right back was never a part of City’s academy but did finish his youth career at sister club Girona before being sent across to England in 2019. He never made an appearance for Pep Guardiola’s side as he was immediately sent out on loan to Real Valladolid at just 20, where he impressed with his on-ball abilities and, especially, his defensive quality.
Porro had an instant impact in Lisbon, playing over 2,500 minutes in their title-winning 2020/21 campaign and continuing to impress thereafter. His move was indeed made permanent in 2022 for the predetermined fee of just €8.5m, which looked like a bit of a steal in hindsight. Just half a year later, he would return to England as Tottenham Hotspur signed him in a €40m transfer.
Trincão, who also joined Sporting on a loan that was later made permanent, is another such example. He wasn’t an academy graduate at Barcelona having joined the club in 2020 after breaking out at Braga, but he never managed to find consistent game time and ended up as something of a reject. A loan to Wolves didn’t quite work out either as he only registered three goal involvements in a full Premier League season, but he still showed glimpses of promise in his performances. He particularly stood out for Portugal’s under-21s at their Euros in 2021, so Sporting decided to take a punt on him in the subsequent summer.
Trincão has already notched up 35 league goal involvements in just over two seasons for Sporting, so the €10m transfer fee investment on him has definitely paid off.
Perhaps the most well-known example, though, is Marcus Edwards. His trajectory was a little different as he was a highly-rated talent at Tottenham Hotspur but failed to break into the first team or impress elsewhere on loan, so he first left the club for Vitória SC in 2019. He soon began to impress as a ball-to-feet attacker with dangerous direct dribbling, but top clubs remained hesitant to sign him given his previous track record.
Sporting ultimately bit the bullet in 2022, and that has also turned out to be a pretty good move.
Recent Foray into New Markets
The markets a club make their signings from reflect the makeup and expertise in the scouting department just as much as their sporting director’s knowledge and network, so it is tough to attribute credit appropriately from the outside. Of course, nothing goes through without the sporting director’s approval, so they deserve a portion of the praise at least. Since Manchester City certainly have a world-class global scouting network already, they will have been encouraged to see Sporting dipping their toes in various different places this summer.
The Portuguese champions’ most expensive signing of the window was Conrad Harder, who came from Denmark without a great deal of senior experience as mentioned above. They only made three other first-team signings, but their total spend ended up crossing €50m.
Just over €15m went to Anderlecht for 20-year-old well-rounded ball-playing centre back Zeno Debast, who had been a consistent bright spark for the Belgian side despite a period of difficulties on and off the pitch. With some of Sporting’s best players in the position such as Ousmane Diomande and Gonçalo Inácio attracting constant transfer links, this was a prudent move.
After 37-year-old goalkeeper Antonio Adán’s departure when his contract expired at the end of the 2023/24 season, Sporting had to look for a new goalkeeper. They made another interesting move, going to Poland to sign Vladan Kova?evi? from Raków Cz?stochowa for just under €5m – the stopper was widely considered the best keeper in the Ekstraklasa and it was the third highest fee ever received by Raków by the end of their window.
The Lisbon giants also made their first signings from CONCACAF in about five years. One of them was a free transfer, namely New York Red Bulls youngster Bento Estrela who has been incorporated into Sporting’s under-23 setup. The other was a much more well-known name, Maximiliano Araújo. He previously stood out as a very attack-minded left back for Toluca and also impressed on the wing for Uruguay at the last Copa América, so he evidently was the perfect profile for the left wingback spot in Sporting’s 3-4-2-1 formation.
Given the vast multi-club network at their disposal, Manchester City have been quite proactive in making moves for the best talents all over the world in recent years. So, Viana’s global knowledge should prove handy at the Etihad Stadium.
The Job at Manchester City
While succeeding someone with the experience and track record of Txiki Begiristain can never be an easy job, Viana will have some opportunities to make an instant impact at Manchester City. Although their recent success has been built on some very good recruitment and squad building, they seem to have slacked off a bit of late. As a result, a couple of things quite clearly need to be worked on quickly.
Gaps To Plug in the Squad
As football fixture calenders get increasingly congested, it is no longer the best XI but the best squad that determines the best team in the world. Manchester City can stake a claim to that title from that point of view, and their silverware-yielding success in all competitions possible makes for a very compelling argument.
However, they rather confusingly thinned their squad in the summer. They only made two signings while selling five players and loaning out four others. Of course, a good chunk of them weren’t really involved in the first team last season, but City still ended up losing a bit of depth in some positions.
Since his arrival in 2019, Manchester City have relied extremely heavily on Rodri in their defensive midfield position. Obviously, it is quite impossible to sign an exactly equal backup option as the Spaniard is arguably one of the best players football has ever seen in that position, so he played almost 20,000 minutes in his first five seasons at the club. Unfortunately, he suffered an season-ending ACL injury this September, and City haven’t looked the same since. They do not seem to have an adequate backup option in their squad as Mateo Kova?i? has not been able to offer anywhere near the same level of defensive solidity, while their lack of depth in other positions has made rejigging the system difficult as well.
In the past, Pep Guardiola had figures like Fernandinho and Kalvin Phillips in his squad to turn to if needed. There is no good justification for that to not be the case at present, so City will surely want to bring in a defensive midfielder in 2025.
There is potential for a similar issue to arise in the striker position. Of course, no one in world football who can even think about rivalling Erling Haaland at the moment, but he is human after all and may not necessarily be available for each of the 50+ matches in a season. Until last year, City had Julián Alvarez who could both partner and replace the Norwegian superstar, so their decision to not replace him after a club-record sale to Atlético Madrid could be considered another questionable decision.
Other areas of the squad will also need work sooner or later. The aging Kyle Walker could need replacing at right back soon, and while Rico Lewis seems primed to make that position his own, a bit of backup would be useful. If reports are to be believed, Kevin De Bruyne and at least one of the top two goalkeeeprs could be on their way out in 2025, so further replacements will be in order. Clearly, Viana is not going to have a dull day after he joins Manchester City.
Injection of Youth Needed
While he is working on the more pressing issue of squad depth, Viana will have to be mindful of the age profile issue that has suddenly yet quietly crept up. Manchester City’s average squad player age has hovered around the 25-year-old mark for the best part of a decade rose sharply from 25.7 last season to 27.7 this term – the highest it has ever been since the Abu Dhabi-led takeover of the club. Besides sales, signings such as Kova?i? (29 years old at the time of joining in 23) and the returning ?lkay Gündo?an (brought back at 33 years old) have contributed to this trend.
As stars such as De Bruyne and Walker near the twilights of their careers, Manchester City might not be able to sign players in the peak ages as replacements if they want to bring the average age back down to a healthy figure (which can be beneficial for general fitness and long-term planning). So, Viana will have to be on his A-game when it comes to signing young talents, who can obviously be slightly riskier buys and often demand steep transfer fees when going to clubs of Manchester City’s stature. This is doubly so in a market that seems to be privileging pre-peak players and which has therefore seen a surge in their prices.
Replacing Pep Guardiola
Having spent close to a decade at the club, Guardiola’s departure from Manchester City is a matter of when and not if now. His contract runs down at the end of the season, and although he has not ruled out the possibility of signing an extension, the departure of a close friend and colleague in Begiristain will surely only take him closer to the exit door. Even if he does stay on, the Spanish tactician will almost certainly not spend anywhere near another decade at the club, so Viana will always have to be prepared to replace him and therefore constantly monitor candidates.
The job will obviously be very difficult; there isn’t any coach in the world who can guarantee the consistent results and trophies the ex-Barcelona tactician has won at Manchester City and throughout his career, regardless of the amount of support they get and the resources at their disposal.
What makes the matter all the more interesting is that we have extremely little to go by as far as Viana’s coach recruitment track record is concerned. He has only ever signed two head coaches, one of whom lasted half a season while the other was a newcomer in the job but someone with whom he had a long-standing relationship.
The brief will be very straightforward at Manchester City: get the best person possible for the job. There will hardly be any financial or logistical constraints that the club cannot eliminate, but even so, replacing a head coach of Guardiola’s pedigree at a club with the stature and ongoing success of Manchester City could well be the biggest decision Viana makes in his career.
Stats courtesy Transfermarkt, Capology, FotMob and Opta via Fbref
Header image copyright IMAGO / NurPhoto / Paulo Nascimento
