In October, Manchester City announced that Hugo Viana will succeed Txiki Begiristain as their sport director from June 2025. He arrives at the Etihad after spending more than six years at Sporting.
The former Newcastle United midfielder was to finish the season at Sporting, but they released him in February after a disappointing winter market, where they also missed out on Andrés García to Aston Villa.
Sporting were keen on improving the right-back position and had made advances to sign García. They suffered a blow when Aston Villa acted quickly and completed the 22-year-old’s transfer from Levante UD in January.
Today’s O Jogo looks at the efforts put in by the incoming Manchester City director to help Sporting sign the Spaniard. They have also relayed comments made by Felipe Miñambres, who was the sporting director at Levante when they sold García to the Villans.
Miñambres was also relieved from duties by the Spanish club in February. He claims Viana was upset to have lost the fullback to Unai Emery’s side.
“Before Andrés García went to Aston Villa, the first team that came up was Sporting. Hugo Viana called me. I told him about ‘Kocho’ [Giorgi Kochorashvili] and he said to me ‘Felipe, we were going to do it last year, but the players we wanted to sell to bring him in didn’t come through’. But this year, despite leaving, we are going to do it,” he said.
“Then, Andrés went to Aston Villa and Hugo was a bit upset. Later on, Pepe Danvila [advisor] asked me: ‘Look, what about this Sporting deal? What do you think?’. I said it was phenomenal. ‘And what do you think of this amount?’. I also said that it seemed good to me.
“We talked about the medical tests and from then on I was quite left out because all these things started to happen. I knew they were going to be done, but the idea was for it not to be public.”
Should García excel at Aston Villa then future Manchester City links are inevitable.
