Sporting CP are facing a big change in the summer, with sporting director Hugo Viana moving to Manchester City to replace Txiki Begiristain.
That will be a loss to the Portuguese club, who have gone through a period of success with Viana in place. There’s a trio of key people at Sporting, consisting of president Frederico Varandas, manager Ruben Amorim and Viana.
The three are good friends, and have worked very well together. One of the reasons Amorim is still there, and didn’t leave for elsewhere last summer, is that trident.
Given one of them is going it presents the possibility of the whole thing falling apart, with Amorim’s future also the subject of rumours.
Despite all of that, Varandas has been speaking well of Viana’s move to Manchester City, sharing his pride that such a well resourced club has turned to Sporting for a crucial recruit.
Record quote him as saying: “It was a fundamental triangle for the growth and recovery of the true Sporting. This is history. It has remained. It will remain forever. Ruben Amorim and Viana were fundamental, fundamental, in this start. Obviously, Hugo Viana is the talk of the town. Hugo Viana, obviously, and here from a personal point of view, deserves everything. Not only from a professional point of view, from a human point of view. He’s going to, probably on a par with Real Madrid.
“He’s going to one of the most powerful clubs in the world. Something that has never happened in Portugal, a Portuguese manager going to the highest of the highs, and that’s to his credit, but it’s also very much to the credit of how Sporting is seen abroad today. And here in Portugal we often focus too much on the drama, on that soap opera, but abroad, the organised clubs, the winning clubs, look and see a club that has reinvented itself, they see a club that makes a financial profit and they see a club that wins titles and that values its assets. So, obviously, this is the level of excellence at which Sporting is seen abroad. And for us, Sporting, it is very important that Hugo Viana is successful at Manchester City. Very important because that is what we want, to be seen abroad in this way.”
The very civil and generous stance taken by Varandas is partly because he’ll see it as part of his legacy at Sporting. There’ll also be a belief that it could help to increase the value of certain players at the club, ahead of next summer.
