Sporting success: how Portuguese champions plotted their way back

When Sporting parted company with their manager, Silas, on 4 March 2020, it was easy to wonder when the upheaval would end. The Lisbon club sat fourth in the Primeira Liga, four points off third-placed Braga and 20 behind the leaders, Porto, and were about to appoint their fourth manager of the season. He would be the sixth of the presidency of Frederico Varandas, who had taken over in September 2018 from the controversial Bruno de Carvalho.

Sporting remained haunted by the notorious training-ground attack of May 2018, when 50 hooligans – incensed by poor results – stormed the premises to beat up players and staff. In May of last year, a Portuguese court made 41 convictions for assault and threatening behaviour, with nine men receiving five-year prison sentences. De Carvalho was cleared of having helped to mastermind the episode. Sporting said it had left “an indelible mark on the club and its fans”.

Varandas and his sporting director, Hugo Viana, a former Newcastle midfielder, had to get the managerial appointment right. The climate was edgy and not only because the pandemic was coming. It was accurate to describe the relationship between the board and supporters as awful.

What Varandas and Viana did was risky. They turned to Rúben Amorim, a former Portugal midfielder, who had spent much of his playing career at Sporting’s crosstown rivals, Benfica. He was 35 years old and a veteran of two months of top-flight management with Braga, albeit spectacular ones. He had won eight and drawn one of his nine league matches and won the Taça da Liga, beating Sporting in the semi-final and Porto in the final. Sporting had to pay the €10m release clause in Amorim’s contract and it only added to the pressure on him and the club to