I worked with Hugo Viana and Ruben Amorim at Sporting CP - it's clear what Man City and Man United will get

Filipe Celikkaya had just won the league title in Ukraine when he got an offer to come home that he felt he couldn't refuse.

Hugo Viana wanted to set up a B team for the Sporting CP academy in 2020 and wanted Celikkaya to come back to Lisbon and run it. Celikkaya agreed on one condition: if ever Viana or fellow friend and Sporting manager Ruben Amorim were to leave, he would go to; he would not stick around to work without his close friends who shared his vision.

Viana promised 'something special' and Celikkaya followed his instinct, and after four years together none could believe quite how spectacularly it had paid off. Sporting became Portuguese champions for the first time in 20 years before adding another title, and in addition to supplying the senior squad in Lisbon the B team has supplied players across three continents and 15 countries over the past four years.

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The four years Celikkaya spent running the B team in Sporting is the longest spell he has had anywhere in 17 years of coaching. Having started at the age of 21 after realising he wouldn't make it as a professional player - he came through the youth team at Belenenses with Amorim - Celikkaya has taken on a range of roles in countries including Ukraine and Qatar in a bid to expand his football knowledge.

"I went to Al Ahli to discover another type of football and way of thinking. I think it's very important to the coach that wants to grow as a coach that he needs to know the world and have a global view of the football world," he told the Manchester Evening News.

"After these