Since last summer, the Portuguese media has been saying that Sporting have an agreement with Manchester City for the signing of players.
It’s been claimed a few times that the Premier League side would fund the transfer of a few youngsters to the Portuguese side, and would have a preference to get them in the future.
This partnership has never been officially confirmed, and even though the local media tried to get a comment from a club official this week, he kept this subject very unclear.
Newspaper Record interviewed Sporting president Frederico Varandas, and when asked if this ‘protocol’ with Manchester City is good enough to advance, he was pretty evasive.
“We have good relations with Man City. The partnership involves sharing ownerships, which requires purchases. City bought a player from us for €3.5m, Félix Correia. We made a proposal to renew with him, in which he would be the most expensive in the history of our academy, but he didn’t want it.”
The case which made this partnership known was the one of Thiago Almada from Racing. It had been claimed in the summer that Manchester City would fund his move to Sporting.
And when asked about his transfer, the president says it never happened because the Lions would have to spend money to make the signing.
“It required investment, which was not possible.”
So perhaps they were expecting Manchester City to give them the player for free.
