It was more than four years ago, but the sentence in the form of a question that Rúben Amorim left at the end of his presentation in Alvalade as Sporting coach continues to be a good starting point. “What if it goes well?”, he asked on March 6, 2020. It had already gone well before, it’s going well again now, perhaps even better than in 2021. Sporting secured its 20th national champion title this Sunday , the second title in four years, both with Frederico Varandas as president and Amorim on the bench. In a year in which it was imperative to stay in the top two places because of the new format of the Champions League, the “lions” made the right bets at the right time, taking full advantage of the implosion of their competitors at different moments throughout the season.
A title (which, in this case, can still be accompanied by winning the Portuguese Cup) validates whatever the strategy of whoever won it was. In retrospect, everything worked out for a tasty title and the always desirable bonus of millions for direct entry into the group stage of the Champions League. The surgical and expensive reinforcements, the short squad (but with many central defenders, no less than eight), even the change in external communication of the objectives for the season, in which Amorim went from the “game to game” of 2020-21 to the “if I don’t win anything, I’ll leave” of 2023-24. We still don’t know if that will be the case, but we’ll get there. First, what went well, how it went well and why everything had to go well.
What went well
To understand what went well, we first need to build a bridge with the past again. Amorim joined in March 2020 and spent the last few months of that time, not so much to be competitive, but to make assessments about what he had and what he needed. From that first squad he had in his hands, three names remain, all central: Sebastian Coates, Eduardo Quaresma and Luís Neto, plus Gonçalo Inácio, who didn’t have minutes at that time, but was already signaled. Then, he tried to build a squad tailored to his ideas, letting go of those who had to let go and with fixed ideas about what needed to be added, whilst still submitting to the need to create value through the transfer market.
Last season, this squad was not prepared to fight for titles – lacking in several positions, such as midfield and attack. And that, to a certain extent, was also important for this time, because the gaps were well identified and there was time to fill them. Sporting spent a lot too little, but they spent well. Last summer, the “lions” signed the two most expensive players in their history, Viktor Gyökeres (20+5 million) and Morten Hjulmand (18+3 million), who were not accredited players in top teams – the Swede came from English second division, the Danish from a bottom-of-the-table team in Serie A. Both were a risk. Now, no one discusses what they cost.
Gyökeres, above all, was a find. The season is not over yet and the Swede already has 27 goals and nine assists in the championship (41 + 14 if we count all competitions), but his impact cannot be measured just by “simple” statistics. With him, the team gained a whole other dimension, as he is a strong and fast player who attacks from deep and demands tight markings from his opponents. Even if he doesn’t score or assist (he had 12 games like that), the Swede’s presence kind of released the best in others, like Paulinho himself, Pedro Gonçalves or Trincão.
As for Hjulmand, he was the “six” that Sporting needed to compensate for the departure of Ugarte, who, in turn, had already been João Palhinha’s replacement. The Danish player is different from his predecessors in the position, but with a different ability to adapt to what the team needs, depending on who played alongside him – he had three preferred partners throughout the season, Morita, Bragança and Pedro Gonçalves, each of them requiring a different aspect of the Nordic, more defensive, or with more access to the opposite area.
The two entered without friction into a team that was already assembled and with its own identity, and added value. Others were revelations (especially one, Geny Catamo), others were confirmations (Morita, Pedro Gonçalves, Coates, Inácio, Nuno Santos), others still experienced a time of rebirth (Paulinho, Eduardo Quaresma, Francisco Trincão, Daniel Bragança). On the other side of the coin, Marcus Edwards had a drop in performance (but it was important in the first half of the season), the same happened with Diomande, St. Juste was once again betrayed by his physique and it remains to be seen what the three others are worth reinforcements of the time (Fresneda, Koindredi and Pontelo). And we have the issue of the goalkeepers, none of them at the level of the field players – Adán was far from his 2020-21 performance, Israel alternated between great and terrible.
How well it went
In 21 seasons in a championship with 18 teams and with victory worth three points, Sporting has scored more points (84) than in 17 of those full seasons. If they win one more game, they reach 87 and surpass their best seasons (86 in 2015-16 and 85 in 2020-21 and 2021-22), and if they win in the last two rounds they reach 90, second only to FC Porto from 2021-22 (91 points) as the highest scoring champion ever. And just looking at the complete seasons with Amorim, Sporting is on track to make its best comeback ever – it had already scored 45 points in the 1st round in 2020-21, it could reach 47 in 2023-24.
In the 32 games played, Sporting left the fewest points on the table and never let a bad result extend into a series of bad results. And the proof of this is that it never stopped leading – the only reason it wasn’t leader in two rounds, the 20th and 23rd, was because there was a game behind and Benfica took the opportunity to temporarily reclaim the lead. Other than that, the “lions” were always at the top of the rankings, with or without company. And when they adjusted the calendar, with a victory, they opened a specific gap for the “reds” that would prove to be insurmountable.
Until you see it, there were 27 wins, three draws and two defeats. Sporting lost the first points in the fourth round (1-1 draw in Braga) and, after that, only conceded again in the 11th (defeat in Luz). Two rounds later, another defeat, this time in Guimarães (3-2), but without major consequences on the classification, following this second defeat with a series of 18 games without losing – 16 wins and two draws, and just four points lost, while Benfica lost 11, FC Porto 22 and SP. Braga 21. The clashes with rivals also helped to make the difference, especially in the second round: Sporting scored 11 points out of a possible 18 in the mini-championship of the first four, Benfica even scored more (12), while FC Porto scored seven and Sp. Braga just one, and in the last round there will still be a clash between “warriors” and “dragons” in Minho.
And there are two important facts in this statistic. Firstly, Sporting was the only team in the championship to score in every game. More importantly, they have achieved a record number of victories in all the games played so far in Alvalade – 16. If they win at home in the last round against the already doomed Desportivo de Chaves, it will be the fifth time that the “lions” spend a season with only home victories for the championship (it had already happened in 1939-40, 1946-47, 1953-54 and 1979-80), but it will be the first in a league with 18 teams.
Everything had to go well
With the baggage of the three previous seasons (title, second place and fourth), Amorim raised the “Leonine” expectations to the level of winning titles. The surgical reinforcement of the squad, in accordance with the evolutionary plan drawn up at the beginning of his management, indicated this. The team was formed and the dynamics were consolidated, as were the tactical profile and the management model. With well-defined priorities, the championship above all else, but with the desire to go far in other competitions – they finished in the “eighth” of the Europa League and in the “semi-finals” of the League Cup, but will reach the final of the Portuguese Cup. Short squad, ambitious speech, everyone pulling in the same direction. Noise reduced to a minimum.
As if everyone was surrounded by a bubble that protected them from the elements. The same did not happen with rivals. Benfica, with the pressure of favoritism that defended the title and a reinforced investment in the squad entailed, allowed itself to be left behind due to various incompatibilities: from the players it had to Roger Schmidt’s tactical and strategic plan; from Schmidt himself with a desire to change his ideas; and a wide group of fans with the German coach. FC Porto, at a time when the elections would prove to be the end of a winning cycle, was too inconsistent that not even Sérgio Conceição’s powers of alchemy could save it. As for Sp. Braga, it was soon realized that filling the team with ex-internationals was not going to be enough.
It was only in the last few weeks that something disturbed the “Leonine” journey towards the title. Amorim’s trip to London, perhaps to negotiate with someone, perhaps to go see a musical in the West End on his day off – that he was there is a fact and had every right to do so, the rest is speculation and damage control, something that Amorim, usually so skilled at communicating, was unable to do completely effectively. Whether it was supposed to be a secret or not, the truth is that everyone knew about it. And the coach there apologized for diverting attention from a title that was not yet guaranteed.
Even after the title was secured, Amorim left a lot of things unclarified, one of them being his immediate future, whether he will go to other latitudes, whether he will stay at Sporting, where he has become the central figure of this winning cycle in a way that has not been seen for a long time. Even though he prefers to share the merits with players, staff and managers (and never forgets his friend Hugo Viana), the young coach is the face and body of Sporting football.
If he continues in Alvalade, obviously the scenario of his succession does not arise. And this also applies, although to a lesser extent, with regard to players with a larger market, such as Gyökeres, Inácio, Diomande or Pedro Gonçalves – for each one that leaves, another will have to enter. If Amorim leaves, it is important who comes, but more important is to understand whether the project is sustainable with another. And whether the winning cycle has legs to continue.
