1.3 The rise and fall of Bruno de Carvalho - Taken to the Dry Cleaners

In part two of the series on the rise and fall of Bruno de Carvalho as club president of Sporting CP we followed his first full season at the helm in his new role. Leonardo Jardim had been hired as his new mister replacing Jesualdo Ferreira who had presided over what was described as the club's worst ever season in its history which saw it fail to qualify for European competition for only the second time. Without a pot to piss in the lions had sold their top goalscorer for €10m to Norwich City and had received an additional €500,000 from another sale. Just one incoming signing garnered a fee which was €400,000 giving them a net spend of -€10.1m. The club's accountants would have been happier at least. Despite Jardim having to rely on academy players to boost his squad depth, a disappointing exit to the clubs biggest city rivals in the Taça de Portugal and failing to get out of the group stage of the Taça da Liga, the season was still somewhat of a success as they leapfrogged early leaders Porto to finish runners up, losing just 3 times over the course of a 30 game season meaning Jardim went unbeaten in 90% of his league games. However all was not well behind the scenes and Jardim and de Carvalho had a fractious relationship which had deteriorated so badly that at the end of the campaign Jardim resigned triggering a release clause which allowed Ligue 1 side AS Monaco to hire him as their new mister and de Carvalho was on the look out for his second mister in the space of a year. The 2014/15 season is going to be my debut year following the club. To reiterate as we learned in the first part the lions had not won the league title since the 2001/02 season. So who would the new mister be?

Remember in the last part that I made the point of writing that Estoril had finished fourth, their best ever finish in the Portuguese top flight and qualified automatically for the Europa League? Well that was me laying the breadcrumbs for you all. Their mister was one Marco Alexandre Saraiva da Silva. He'd originally been hired as their director of football in the June of 2011 at the tender age of just 34 years old. However it transpired he wasn't long for that role as early on in the season he replaced Vinícius Eutrópio as their coach. At the time of his appointment Estoril were tenth in Liga 2. Despite losing his first game as the mister 3-1 to Penafiel, after just 3 defeats in the 24 games he took charge, Estoril would finish the season as Champions winning promotion back to the top flight and with it the title of the league's coach of the year. Not bad considering he'd started out as director of football after all.

In Silva's first ever full season, he took Estoril to fifth place which was then their best ever finish and their qualification for the Europa League was also a club first. They beat Sporting 3-1 at home and drew 2-2 away.

In his second full season it was Silva who had famously consigned FC Porto to their first home defeat on February 23rd, 2014 since they'd lost to Leixões on October 25th, 2008 3-2. That unbeaten run stretched across 81 matches in which the dragons won 70 times and drew 11. An Evandro penalty 13 minutes from time was enough for a 1-0 win. Despite the loss they'd have still had some way to go to beat the all time record held by Real Madrid who went 121 games unbeaten between February 1958 and March 1965 at home. Certainly helped to be blessed with all time greats such as Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás and a string of partisan referees (allegedly). I will endeavour to remember to do a separate post on the Apito Dourado affair involving the late Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, club president of FC Porto until 2024. But for now this series remains focused on our own Bruno de Carvalho. Anyways getting back on track, Silva after his first season's success went one place better and for the second time had led Estoril to their highest ever league finish an European automatic qualification. What a run for the young mister, a Liga 2 title and leading the club to their two best ever placed finishes all in your first two and a half seasons as a first team coach. Clearly a young coach already with pedigree and to match his potential so it would surely be no surprise to see Bruno de Carvalho quickly move to hire the then 36 year old on May 21st, 2014 on a four year contract to replace Leonardo Jardim. His stock at this time was already sky high and the expectations going into the new season must have been burdensome, especially as noted in part one, when your boss decides unlike every other club president in the league, he's not going to sit in the stands, but instead on the bench. Please let that fact really sink in. Can you name one other club president who sits on their bench with the coaching staff and substitutes during a game? If you can name me one other then well done but I bet you can't name me two. It's as far as I know still unprecedented to this day and whilst an experienced mister might have shrugged it off, when you're not even 40 years old and going into only your third full season it surely cannot have been helpful.

Pre-season began with the now defunct Taça da Honra which was a tournament held between teams of the Lisbon Football Association (AFL). It had been put on ice for twenty years before being resurrected the previous season, only to then vanish again after this one but not before the lions had first defeated Belenenses 2-1 and then Benfica 1-0 in the final on July 20th. Let's be honest no one is crowing about winning this as a major achievement but a win in the Dérbi de Lisboa in whatever format is always going to be celebrated. Then the lions went Dutch by which I don't mean they split the bill. They beat Achilles 5-2 who proved no heel. Utrecht were dispatched 3-0, however they proved no match for FC Twente on July 28th losing 2-0 and of course that scoreline when you take out the separating - reads as… never mind.

Remember Jardim's words from the last campaign, how he'd had to temper expectations and blend his squad with senior pros and academy youngsters? A season where the only outlay financial had been €400,000. Well that blueprint went out the window. Over the course of the campaign they signed Ryan Gauld, dubbed mini Messi, from Dundee United for €3.8m and he really was being billed at the time as one of the very best youngsters in European football. The Argentine Jonathan Silva came from Estudiantes La Piata for €2.9m. Bulgarian Simeon Slavchev came from Litex Lovech for €2m but de Carvalho was not done with his spending there.

Paulo Oliveira - Vitória SC - €2m
Hadi Sacko - Bordeaux - €1.4m
Oriol Rossell - Kansas City - €1m
André Geraldes - Belenenses - €1m
Nabby Sarr - Lyon - €1m
Ramy Rabia - Al Alhy - €750,000
Tanaka - Kashiwa Retail - €750,000
Gazela - Padroense - €500,000
Jefferson - Flumiense - €300,000
Ewerton from Anzhi Makhachkala on loan for a reported fee of €300,000

If all that wasn't enough the club also announced the return of Nani from Manchester United on loan. Total reported outgoings €18.2m up €17.8m on the previous season's spending.

The sale of Eric Dier to Spurs brought in €5m and Marcus Rojo joined Manchester United for the same fee. Fabían Rinauldo left to join Catania for €1m. In all 18 players were either sold, released or sent out on loan and the €11m in sales gave them a net spend of €7m. However in de Carvalho's time this still meant a net spend of -€3.1m. These are hardly massive figures, especially in context to today's standards but Sporting are still in the financial shit fully up to their necks and from having gone from holding the purse strings tight to splashing out an additional €17.8m, even with fees coming in to offset those costs it is still a gigantic leap for the club at this time.

Quick sidebar, the league had gone from 16 teams playing 30 games a season to 18 teams playing 34 games a season.

With Portugal’s young rising coaching star in charge and plenty of new signings including Scotland's hottest prospect in decades amongst the ranks, expectations for their opening game away to Académica and the season ahead must have been sky high amongst their fans. Matchday 1 however finishes in a 1-1 draw. OK well never mind these things happen. Matchday 2 a 1-0 home to Arouca. Well it's a win and 3 points. Matchday 3 a Dérbi de Lisboa away to the reigning champions finishes 1-1. I'd always argue just don't lose the Dérbi, you can't win them all. Another Dérbi in Matchday 4 brings a 1-1 draw at home to Belenenses. Yes, for those of you uber observatant, that's the same Benfica and Belenenses they'd beaten a few weeks previously in pre-season. Six points from a possible twelve had ironically probably managed to nicely temper the expectations that Jardim had struggled to do the previous season.

Matchday 5 saw a 4-0 thumping of Gil Vicente away - signs of improvement, only to be followed with a 1-1 draw in O Clássico at home to Porto. Still they were unbeaten. Penafiel dispatched 4-0 away, Marítimo 4-2 at home. Everyone has teething problems right? But that's 3 times in the opening 8 rounds that Silva's team have scored 4 times in a game. He's still unbeaten in the league. Matchday 9 - Vitória SC away and what happens? A 3-0 defeat is what happens.

In the Liga they flit between wins and draws until round 14 when they first beat Nacional 1-0 away and put a run together of six straight wins which encompassed a 3-0 win at home to his old side Estoril, 1-0 away to Braga, 4-2 at home to Rio Ave, 1-0 at home to Académica and finally 3-1 away to Arouca. That run was brought to an end by mirrored results from the first draws against Benfica and Belenenses. Matchday 23 brought only his second loss but that came in O Clássico in the Dragão 3-0 and wouldn't have helped his cause.

There were other big wins before the end of the season. Revenge was gained for the loss to Vitória when they were dispatched 4-1 at the José Alvalade on Matchday 26. Moreirense beaten 4-0 away on Matchday 30 and Braga 4-1 at home on Matchday 33.

For the second straight season the lions failed to make it past the group phase of the Taça da Liga. The group of five was topped by Vitória de Setúbal with Sporting finishing in second with only the winners progressing to the knockout phases.

In the Champions League things didn't go much better for Silva. Sporting drew 1-1 away to Maribor on Matchday 1. Chelsea came away from the José Alvalade with a narrow 1-0 win which seems respectable enough next to the 4-3 handed out away by Schalke, although that being said it's still the same goal difference but conceding 4 always feels far worse doesn't it? They gained revenge at the José Alvalade however with a 4-2 win and then beat Maribor 3-1. Any hopes of progressing out of the group rested on beating Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, a game they promptly lost 3-1. However they did drop down into the Europa League by virtue of finishing 3rd in the table.

In the Europa League round of 32 they were paired with more German opposition in the form of VfL Wolfsburg and promptly lost the away leg 2-0 and could only draw 0-0 at the José Alvalade and with that the European chapter was also quickly brought to a close.

The league would end with Sporting having slipped to third place, leapfrogged by Porto in a straight swap with Leonardo Jardim's season previously. If that wasn't bad enough city rivals Benfica were once again crowned Champions. They might have won the Honour Cup against their city rivals way back in July but let's be fair that counted for the sum total of fuck and all.

Marco Silva's record read: Played 34, won 22, drawn 10, lost 2. GF 67, GA 29.

A quick reminder of Jardim's record which read: Played 30, won 20, drawn 7, lost 3. GF 54, GA 20.

In terms of fairness given Silva had four more matches than Jardim, if you work it out on an average points per game their two totals are as follows;

Silva 2.235
Jardim 2.233 (-0.002)

So despite an investment of just €400,000 and having to rely largely on the academy players, Jardim's league season comparatively felt much more of a success given the significant lack of investment. Based on the average points per game had both misters played 34 games they'd have likely finished with the same total. Tomatoes, tomatoes, which works far better spoken than it does in the written format. However Marco Silva unlike Leonardo Jardim had one saving grace, his season wasn't yet over he still had one more game to come.

Silva might have lost O Clássico in the Dragão in the league, but in the Taça de Portugal back on October 19th it had been a very different story as his lions side won 3-1 in round 3. A month later they smashed Sporting de Espinho 5-0 away from home and a month after that beat Vizela away 3-2 in round 5. That was on December 17th of 2024. Store that date away for future reference; it might become important. In the quarter finals in January they thump Famalicão 4-0 to book their place in the semi finals. Away from home Nacional held them to a 2-2 draw but crucially in the home leg at the José Alvalade the lions won 1-0 to progress 3-2 on aggregate. Marco Silva and the lions would be off to Jamor. I've already stated in this series twice when Sporting last won the league but should probably mention (Taça da Honra aside - doesn't count) their last silverware came in 2008 when they won the Supertaça (only counts if you win it). Their opponents in Jamor would be Sporting Braga.

Quick sidebar, if seeing Bruno de Carvalho on the bench hadn't been confusing enough for me, the vast majority of players in Portugal wore their first names on the back of their shirts. I'm guessing that's because of a commonality of Portuguese surnames but don't quote me on that. Wolverhampton Wanderers this season have four Gomes’ in their ranks. The surnames of Silva and Costa certainly appear to be pretty commonplace and there have been several Pedro Mendes’ and Nuno Santos' over the years to mention just two examples where Portuguese players share the exact same basic name. Can I also add I really enjoyed watching the football played under Marco Silva, I felt all he was really missing was someone capable of finding the back of the net on a regular basis. The midfield pairing of João Mario and Adrien Silva was as good as any in the league and they were both on their day Rolls Royce standard midfielders.

Back to the post and the final in Jamor.

Sunday May 31st, 2015 the date.

Marco Silva's Starting XI

Rui Patricio, Cédric Soares, Paulo Oliveira,  Ewerton, Jefferson, William Carvalho, Adrien Silva, João Mario, André Carillo, Islam Slimani and Nani.

I'd never wondered until now what I might say if I was the mister to my players before a cup final. Would it be words of inspiration? Confirmation of tactics? I'm guessing I'd go with something simple, tell them how hard they've worked to get here, block out all the noise, focus on the game at hand, enjoy yourselves and most of all - just don't do anything fucking stupid.

13 minutes in and Cédric concedes a penalty bringing down Djavan and to compound his misery is given his marching orders. So much for not doing anything stupid. Éder converted it two minutes later going bottom left, with Rui Patricio going right and Braga already 1-0 to the good and the lions facing the prospect of another 75 minutes down to ten men. Sporting's misery was further compounded on 24 minutes. A long ball pumped forward should have been easily cleared by Miguel Lopes who'd come on as a substitute for João Mario after Cédric's dismissal. Instead he's bundled off the ball by Rafa. Both men went to ground but the Braga man regained his footing and continued his run into the area to finally slot home from 7 yards for 2-0.

Silva brought on Carlos Mane for Carillo in the 53rd minute and made his final change on 73 bringing on Fredy Montero for Lopes and the substitute had suffered the ignominy of being substituted.

Sporting were handed a lifeline in the 83rd minute. A sliced clearance fell to Islam Slimani on the edge of the area who with two Braga defenders in front of him, side stepped to the right and somehow managed to squeeze the ball into the bottom left hand corner from 24 yards. Two minutes past the 90 the lions went for the Hail Mary pass and punted a long ball from inside their own half towards the Braga box. Somehow the ball fell over the top of the last defender and Montero controlled it and with his second touch bundled it home from 4 yards and with the scoreline now an improbable 2-2 we were off to extra time.

Despite playing over 100 minutes with ten men, Braga were unable to break down the lions again and so we went to penalties. Alan made it 1-0 with a stop start run up that would have been banned now. His effort went left, Patricio went right. No equivalent messing about from Adrien who pinged his effort into the top left hand corner to make it 1-1. André Pinto's effort was saved by Patricio and when Nani scored it was advantage lions 2-1. Éder put his effort over the bar, Islam Slimani made it 3-1 and when Salvador Agra's effort struck the left hand post, pandemonium erupted in the far end of the stadium where the Sportinguista's were housed. Marco Silva had guided Sporting to their first silverware since 2008 and had finished the season as a title winner. Slimani for his part was awarded player of the match. I exclaimed myself as the lucky charm and everyone was happy. Weren't they?

Incredibly the answer was no and de Carvalho acted like a man who'd received a Valentines card in May. The Taça de Portugal comeback win was apparently too little too late.

In Portugal as a publicly listed company all transfers and hirings of coaching staff have to be announced through the exchange with which the club is registered. On June 4th, 2015 the following statement was released.

Under the terms and for the effects of fulfilling the obligations stated in article 248 n°1 al. a) of the Market Securities Code, the Sporting Clube de Portugal, Futebol - SAD Board of Administration informs that today after having been unable to reach an agreement, coach Marco Silva was today informed of the termination of his employment for just cause.

In this light, instructions have been given to develop the necessary procedures immediately.

Lisbon, 4th of June.

So just four days after his lions side won the cup, de Carvalho had dispensed with his mister for the second straight season. And what exactly was that just cause? Well allegedly it all came down to Marco Silva’s failure to wear a club suit in the Taça de Portugal tie against Vizela. His excuse being that he was only issued with one club suit which he wore in 52 of the 53 official matches played by the lions that campaign. Silva did not remember what prevented him from wearing it during that game, possibly, it was at the dry cleaners. Did you make a note of that date I told you to earlier? Yes, that's right, just cause was not wearing his club suit in a game played five months previously.

Rumours have circulated ever since the sacking. Some parties claim the president was jealous of the misters popularity amongst the club's fan base. Given de Carvalho's ego was big enough to believe his position allowed him leave to sit on the bench I have to say you imagine those rumours carry weight and credence. It's widely reported that a massive rift had developed between the young Silva and de Carvalho in much the same manner that it had done with the club president and Jardim twelve months earlier. The failure to wear a club suit was clearly a pretext for getting rid of Marco Silva just one year into his four year contract. A secret deal had been done to hire his replacement. Following his dismissal, to add insult to injury de Carvalho added a clause requiring Silva to pay Sporting if he joined another Portuguese club which is why he was ultimately forced to join a club abroad.

It is also reported that de Carvalho had wanted to sack Marco Silva as early as December only to backtrack when it appeared the vast majority of fans backed their young mister and were opposed to such a change being made. The British newspaper, the Daily Mirror alludes to a 400 page document which outlined how Sporting acted with just cause after what the club apparently deemed to have been a number of disciplinary infringements but like all good legends it's the failure to wear the club suit reason that still resonates loudest to this day as the sole reason he was given the boot.

In the end Marco Silva would land in Greece the next season moving to Olympiacos where the mister guided them to a record 43rd Greek league title, winning 28 of their 30 league matches, finishing 30 points ahead of Panathinaikos. It should be noted for future reference that Silva was a client of Portuguese super agent Jorge Mendes. Yes this is like Hansel and Gretal so follow the trail.