There are a couple of obvious starting points for any assessment of Hugo Viana and the job he has done as sporting director at Sporting Lisbon.
One is the club’s on-field record since he took that job in 2018. Sporting had won just four trophies — and no league titles — in the previous 16 seasons. They have since claimed six pieces of silverware, including two Portuguese championships, fracturing the longstanding Benfica-Porto duopoly.
Another is the list of Sporting’s successes in the transfer market over that same period. An abridged version would include Manuel Ugarte, Matheus Nunes and Pedro Porro, bought for a total of around €35million (£29m/$38m at current exchange rates) and sold, combined, for more than four times that. Their latest generation of savvy signings — Viktor Gyokeres, Ousmane Diomande, Morten Hjulmand — looks likely to be every bit as profitable.
Success has many fathers. Ruben Amorim, Sporting’s manager, deserves — and has received — huge amounts of praise for his part in turning the club’s fortunes around since his appointment in March 2020. The president, Frederico Varandas, is another public figurehead, while the scouting department clearly have their house in order.
Speak to people with intimate knowledge of the club, however, and it quickly becomes clear just how central Viana has been to everything — and why their fans are so devastated that he will leave the club at the end of the season to join Manchester City, following Txiki Begiristain’s decision to step down at the age of 60.
The influence of sporting directors can be hard to define. This is especially true of those, like Viana, who do not court attention. But ask about a bit and a picture emerges of a measured, diplomatic operator, equally at home at the training ground and around the negotiation table, who has raised standards at his club.
“Hugo is a key part of our process,” Varandas said last year.
Amorim, who counts Viana as a friend as well as a professional ally, is of a similar view. “For us — for me — Viana is indispensable,” he said in 2022. “He does the job like no one else.”
Jose Chieira, who worked under Viana between 2018 and 2021, latterly as Sporting’s head of scouting and recruitment, is similarly emphatic.
“I have worked with a lot of people, but he has a very unique profile,” Chieira told The Athletic. “He has qualities that you don’t often find.
“Hugo is a superstar in every aspect.”
To many English football fans, Viana’s name conjures only a handful of blurry memories of his ill-fated spell playing for Newcastle United in the early 2000s.
Viana was 19 when he made the move to St James’ Park. He had just helped Sporting to the title and was already a senior international. Expectations were high. He couldn’t meet them: he was sent out on loan after two underwhelming seasons (61 appearances in all competitions, 28 starts, four goals) under former Sporting manager Bobby Robson and later sold to Spain’s Valencia at a loss.
“It was too early,” Viana said recently in a rare interview, on a podcast published by the Expresso newspaper. “I let myself get carried away.”
The remainder of his career was played out under the shadow of that early failure. He produced his best football back in Portugal, for Braga, even earning a late-career recall to the national team. His dreamy left foot remained his main weapon, but Viana was also an astute reader of the game. He was a sounding board for younger players and coaches, too.
“He was a player with personality,” Domingos Paciencia, his manager at Braga between 2009 and 2011, tells The Athletic. “You could discuss the game with him. We talked about a lot of different issues in football.”
The two crossed paths again in 2017. Paciencia was managing Lisbon-based Belenenses when a 34-year-old Viana — who had called time on his playing career the year before — was named their director of football. It was an eye-catching appointment, but Viana had been preparing himself for the job for some time.
“He had only just retired, but he already had an interesting database of players,” Jose Luis, then director general of Belenenses, told Portuguese newspaper A Bola. “He had done a UEFA course and had a lot of international contacts.”
Paciencia welcomed Viana with open arms. They discussed their plans over dinners during a pre-season training camp in the Algarve; Paciencia felt he had gained a kindred spirit at boardroom level. “Hugo knew how things worked,” he says. “He was already a football person. He is very stable and considered. He transmits a sense of calm. I was happy for him to come and work with me. We had a good relationship.”
Viana, though, would be gone within six months after falling out with club president Rio Pedro Soares.
The way Paciencia tells it, Soares spoke to a prospective signing before properly discussing it with Viana, who felt undermined. “He thought the president didn’t show him enough respect,” says Paciencia. “He left two or three days later. He was very clear. The first time that he felt that his space had been invaded, he left. That shows his personality.”
Viana’s love affair with Sporting began when he was a teenager.
He had grown up in Barcelos, in the rugged hills of northern Portugal, and initially had a soft spot for Gil Vicente, a modest regional club whose old stadium was just around the corner from his grandmother’s house. But when the capital called, his allegiances shifted and solidified.
Viana joined Sporting’s youth system at 14, turning professional two years later. The only thing he says he regrets about those early years was his failure to finish his school studies.
When he returned to Sporting, in 2018, it was initially as director of international relations. Viana already had a reputation as someone who maintained high-level contacts across the world game: he counts Arsenal sporting director Edu Gaspar, a team-mate at Valencia, as a friend; another former Brazil midfielder, Gilberto Silva, now an agent, is another example.
“The most important thing for a director is having good connections, ” Diogo Boa Alma, who dealt with Viana frequently during his time as sporting director at Portuguese clubs Santa Clara and Casa Pia, tells The Athletic. “These days, you need good networks everywhere, to get information from people you can trust all around the world. Hugo has those. Then you need to be able to relate with players, agents and coaches, and he does. He connects well with the people he’s with.”
That international relations position proved to be a stepping stone. Varandas leaned on Viana during the appointment of Dutch coach Marcel Keizer in 2018 and promoted him to sporting director the following January.
This was a tough time at Sporting. The club were still reeling from an attack on the club’s training ground by hooded intruders in May 2018; several prominent players had left in the wake of that incident and a sense of unease lingered. At the start, Viana’s biggest jobs were to restore stability and bring the club’s culture into the 21st century.
“Sporting were entering a new cycle,” continues Chieira, who arrived at the club around the same time. “There had been a rupture with the past after some difficult situations. It was a phase of reconstruction, of rebirth. Hugo was very important at the start of that process. He made every single person aware of what their mission was and put in place principles that strengthened the club.”
For one thing, there was a renewed emphasis on respect and transparency. “It’s not easy, leading a team,” Viana said on that Expresso podcast. “The most important thing is being honest with everyone. You have to be truthful. From there, you can make the difficult decisions. To lead, you have to be truthful, fair and calm.”
Those are not just empty words, insist those who have worked with Viana.
“He has a professional moral code that is completely non-negotiable,” says Chieira. “He respects people and gives them space to do their jobs. He is a calm guy who doesn’t see the need to impose himself in a forceful way. He lets things play out naturally. Above all, he likes to ask questions and he likes to listen.”
Even Jorge Fernandes, known in the game as Silas, who was fired by Viana just 159 days after replacing Keizer in September 2019, has positive memories. “He’s a calm person, who generally seeks to resolve situations through dialogue,” Silas tells The Athletic. “He’s an easy person to get along with. I had a positive experience with him.”
Those first couple of seasons were not always especially enjoyable for Viana. The changes behind the scenes were not reflected on the pitch: Sporting finished third in 2018-19, then fourth. His efforts in the squad-building department were not to everyone’s taste — Tiago Ilori and Rafael Camacho, two former Sporting academy players signed from Reading and Liverpool respectively, were notable duds — and the fans were not shy about making their views known.
“It’s obvious that my first year and a half at Sporting was very difficult,” Viana said on the Expresso podcast. “I was criticised a lot. The majority of the criticisms were fair. But you have to go through difficult times in order to grow, learn and improve.”
The turning point came in March 2020, when Sporting appointed Amorim as coach.
It was not an uncontroversial choice. Amorim was only 28 matches into his managerial career, and less than half of those had been in the top flight. Sporting had to pay Braga €10million to trigger his release clause, increasing the stakes of their gamble.
Viana and Amorim are old friends. They played together for Portugal and for a season at Braga. While Viana was not solely responsible for the appointment, it was always natural that his fate was going to be tied to Amorim’s, for better or worse.
Natural, too, that when Amorim led Sporting to the title in 2020-21, it would come to be viewed as a Viana masterstroke.
When it comes to Viana’s interpretation of his role, a few characteristics stand out.
The first is his refusal to seek the limelight. He is more than happy to let Amorim and Varandas take the plaudits for Sporting’s success. He is humble and rarely speaks in the media. “The stars are the players, the coach and the president,” he said on the Expresso podcast. “The rest of us are part of the structure.”
The second is that Viana likes to get his hands — or at least his shoes — dirty. “Hugo is always at the training sessions,” says Boa Alma. “He attends them all. He is close to the team, the staff, everybody. There are many types of sporting director. Many prefer to stay hidden in the office and connect with the board, agents, other directors. Hugo’s style is to be more close, present out in the training field.”
Perhaps this comes from Viana’s past. He no longer plays football in any form — he jogs to keep fit — but he will always be a former player, will always be drawn to the grass. Which, in turn, helps him connect with current players. “Of course it helps,” he said on the Expresso podcast. “You often know what they are thinking, what they’re going to do in certain situations.”
Viana is also known as a killer negotiator. The most obvious example is the signing of Gyokeres in summer 2023. Sporting were competing against Premier League and Champions League clubs for the Swedish striker’s signature. Coventry City, of the English second tier, were prepared to walk away from the deal if their valuation was not met. Sporting mounted a charm offensive on the player and, after some back and forth, sent Viana to England to speak to Coventry’s owner Doug King.
Against all odds, they got their man. Gyokeres joined for an initial €20million with a potential €4m more in add-ons — a club record. But, 62 games and 55 goals later, he could already be worth four times that amount.
“He understands the arguments he has to use to make Sporting stand out in a very competitive, aggressive market,” says Chieira. “Hugo gets that it isn’t always easy for Sporting — and that he has to find a way of securing priority players.
“Above all, it is the way he plans operations, and carves out opportunities with his social skills. He can turn an unfavourable market situation for Sporting into one in which they have the edge. He makes a connection and shows a player what the project is. He presents something beyond cold, hard numbers.”
Again, transparency is the watchword.
“We can’t lie to a player,” Viana said on that Expresso podcast. “We can’t tell someone we have a great team spirit or a beautiful training complex if we don’t. We have to be honest with them, and then it’s up to them to decide.”
From a club perspective, it helps that Viana exudes professionalism.
“He is very discreet,” says Boa Alma, who negotiated with Viana over Japan midfielder Hidemasa Morita during his time at Santa Clara. “He does not want eyeballs on him. He wants to do things smoothly. Some people want to gamble, but Hugo always tells you the truth — what he can do, what he can’t. Of course, he needs to do his best for his club, but he always tells the truth.”
Nor is Viana simply Sporting’s ‘closer’. Chieira built a proprietary big-data scouting model during his time at the club and says that that would not have been possible without Viana’s support.
“He was always very involved with the scouting department,” says Chieira. “He didn’t need to be across every name in every stage of the process, but when we got close to the top of the pyramid, really filtering the best options, he was very present. He really liked exchanging opinions about different players.
“He knows the game inside-out and is very sensitive to questions of context: he understands that it’s not just about a player’s ability, but also everything around him. Working with us meant he was comfortable with the job he eventually had to do, which was negotiating. It was a very close relationship.”
Amorim rarely misses an opportunity to show his appreciation for Viana.
“Viana has already proved many times that he knows how to do magic,” he said at a press conference in August. Earlier that month, at the Liga Portugal Awards, he was even more effusive: “Any coach would be lucky to work with him. Not just due to his competence but due to his loyalty.”
One Sporting employee, who asked not to be named in this article in order to protect relationships, told The Athletic that Viana and Amorim are “like brothers” — and that their strong personal bond underpins their professional activities.
“It’s a very loyal situation, based on trust,” they said. “Hugo does absolutely everything that Ruben wants. I would even say he’s more loyal to Ruben than he is to Sporting.
“Ruben is a very nice guy, but he also has an ego, even if he doesn’t show it much in public. Inside the club, privately, when he does show it — when he asks for something and things don’t go his way — it’s usually Hugo who makes things go like Ruben wants them to. They’re like a right hand and a left hand. That’s how close they are.”
All of which raises an obvious question: does this make Amorim a shoo-in to be City manager if and when Pep Guardiola decides it is time for either a new challenge or a rest?
“I am 99.9 per cent sure that he either knows he can take Ruben with him, or if he doesn’t know, he’s going to try,” says the same Sporting employee.
Boa Alma agrees: “If it’s up to Hugo to decide on a new coach, he will go for Ruben, I am certain. Their relationship is very, very strong. They speak the same language; they have the same way of looking for players and they understand what is needed to make a team stronger and challenge for the titles.”
Clarity on the Guardiola situation will come later, of course. There is also the rest of this season to navigate — and the very real possibility of a third Portuguese league title for Sporting in Viana’s seven seasons.
The Premier League, though, is once again on the horizon for him, 23 years after that transfer to Newcastle. It will be a bigger challenge, in every sense. “Hugo will know that you cannot compare the budget at City to that at Sporting,” says Paciencia. The scrutiny will also be amplified.
Chieira, though, believes Viana will be up to the challenge.
“Hugo is a citizen of the world,” he concludes. “He is able to read people, to integrate, to understand the environment around him. He’s very intelligent and very diplomatic. He also has a good sense of humour — almost a British sense of humour.
“A lot will depend on the people and the structure he finds at City. That might make all the difference when it comes to the speed of his adaptation. But he has the advantage of having played in England. It’s not a totally new universe for him.”
(Top photo: Jan Kruger/Getty Images/Design: Dan Goldfarb)
