Sporting CP v Glasgow Celtic

 

Sporting CP v Glasgow Celtic

Pre-season

July 14th, 2026

Algarve 

The warm up

There's certainly a feeling of déjà vu in the air as the lions welcome the Scottish Premiership side Glasgow Celtic to the Algarve for the second straight summer for a pre-season friendly. Once more the Scottish giants have recently been crowned league champions, so normal service has been resumed then… well, not quite. Although if you were French you might say it was a case of Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

In the 2024/25 season Celtic finished atop the division with a 15 point gap on rivals Rangers in second place. Heart of Midlothian finished that season a full 40 points off the top spot. Last season however Hearts had managed to bridge the gap by a phenomenal 38 points and took the title race down to the very last game only to suffer final day heartbreak at Celtic Park as the hoops beat them 3-1 to secure the title. 

Having won their opening two games under their mister Brendan Rodgers who was in charge when these sides last met, it looked very much the case of normal service resumed. So much so in fact that the bookmakers Paddy Power paid out on them winning the title and no, that's not a typo. With 36 games remaining of the season they decided to pay out on a title win. I mean to be fair they were right in the end but they weren't right by much it's fair to say. 

On October 27th the club announced that Rodgers had tendered his resignation and on the same day it was confirmed that their former manager Martin O’Neill would take over the role on an interim basis. His last game came on December 3rd when he was replaced by Wilfried Nancy. If you're looking for an apt description of his time as their coach then try this one on for size - he's the French João Pereira. He lasted all of 33 days at the helm before being given the boot. Feels quite apt comparison to me personally. Come January 5th and O’Neill was back and under his stewardship they managed to turn a six point deficit to the season's surprise package in Hearts who topped the table at that point, finally culminating in the final day title win. As I say … Plus ça change… 

I could tell you about the history of Celtic, I could tell you about their links to the fine city of Lisboa, but to be fair I wrote that last summer and I don't want to short change you all by just repeating the same thing again. Whilst I know we're playing Celtic and not Hearts, their season is one that's definitely worth telling because it obviously impacted hugely on Celtic's season and could well do again this time around. The critical factor for their success being their recruitment strategy which also fits in nicely with Sporting over the course of the last 12 to 24 months because where they've clearly struck gold, we've practically not been able to hit a cow's arse with a banjo from two yards out.

Player recruitment is critical to any coach's chances of success. I say this every summer about Portuguese football, it's a league which needs to sell to survive so Sporting's model is hardly unique. You buy young and low cost with the aim of selling high. Alongside that we have the added bonus of homegrown talent which has generated in the region of €350m worth of sales. Sometimes you get those sales right - think Quenda to Chelsea. Sometimes you get those spectacularly wrong - think Mateus Fernandes to Southampton who could potentially move on for €85m this summer just two seasons after being sold for some magic beans. Still his departure did at least help finance a second straight league title win so at least there was some consolation and they'll receive additional compensation through the solidarity payments paid to the development club of any player. It's still a huge financial own goal and also comes at a time where he would now have been the natural successor to Morten Hjulmand this summer. Still hindsight is 20-20 vision, you can't win them all. Putting all that aside, our recruitment has been found wanting and that's nothing new to be fair. The much lauded Hugo Viana brought some absolute turnips during his time including an actual one given that's what Vinagre translates to in English. You can only afford to get it wrong so many times however before it comes back to bite you. 

I always think you can ascertain how much fans know about football by whether they simply call for the coaches head when they think things aren't going well on the pitch. Sometimes it's clearly justified such as in the case of Wilfried Nancy at Celtic. Yet for Sporting we're one year into a rebuilding programme as Rui Borges continues his transition away from the 3-4-3 preference of his predecessor Ruben Amorim. He lost a grand total of two league games last season. Once more he had an unenviable injury list throughout the campaign and found his squad was paper thin by the time April came around. Any Sporting coach is going to face the issue of regularly losing key players every summer. Who knew losing the top goalscorer from the past two seasons would have a detrimental affect on their title bid? Well yes quite it was blindingly obvious wasn't it. Yet every time you change coach, if it comes with a change of playing style you're going to be left with square pegs for round holes. The more times you change the mister the more square pegs you accumulate and eventually you might find things have deteriorated so badly that you end up like West Ham relegated to the Championship with a mismatch of players from several managers and a black hole financially in the hundreds of millions. Sometimes what you need is patience and understanding, two things of course that in fairness rarely afforded to coaches in football. 

We recently got to vote on the end of season awards, one of which was for the signing of the season and it basically fell to one name for every judge, that of Luis Suárez, because there wasn't anyone else in the running. I've been highly critical of his signing all season long and had anyone else been remotely close I'd have found a way to shoehorn them in but there weren't. Luis Guilherme looks like a downgrade on Alisson Santos whose move to Napoli has now been confirmed. Faye and Kochorashvili have one foot each out the door and by the time you read this may well have both departed. Ricardo Mangas looks like a charactereur of a footballer and you have to think letting Mateus Reis go was an equal faux pas as letting Santos go in January. Rui Silva looked broken in latter parts of the season, especially the Taça de Portugal final. Vagiannidis’ signing has made Fresneda a first choice starter and Doris Ioannidis hasn't played since about 2003 and you wonder why he wasn't sent for surgery of some kind but I'm not a doctor so what do I know? Clearly all told, even including the purchase of Suárez who finished top scorer, no one player really worked out. The argument about Suárez won't wash with me I'm afraid when you don't win any title at all, especially given we had to write out another cheque for €500,000 to Almería when he finished top scorer in the league. Virgínia looked OK from what I saw of him but never looked like taking the number one spot from Rui Silva. Overall a D+ and that's boosted by the fact that at least Suárez scored some goals. It could have been much worse. 

So let's go back to Scotland. Celtic fans will share the same complaints with their recent signings I'm sure. Gone are the days of Ange Postecoglu being able to take advantage of his knowledge of the J League. You either need deep pockets and an element of fortune to succeed in player recruitment or you need some special sauce. At the moment neither Sporting or Celtic seem to have either. For the greastest number of years that's not really been an issue for Celtic given their domestic dominance on the pitch and financially to boot compared to every other club. Even Rangers can only boast a figure akin to 80% of their neighbours turnover. In the case of Hearts their budget of £24m is roughly a fifth of Celtics. So not only did they manage to close the gap to 38 points season upon season but they've done it in a comparative shoestring budget. Look all told had O’Neill never left they'd have probably won the league with four games to spare, but they didn't and for the first time in decades there was a real chance that the title was heading outside of Glasgow. So the question is why the massive turn around with Hearts? The answer lies initially with two men. We'll start first with the Brighton and Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom. 

56 year old Bloom is somewhat of a mathematical whizz and he's put that ability to good use making millions from playing poker and from sports betting. Bloom has taken the same data analytics approach to sports betting into football recruitment. He is basically Moneyball on steroids. Brighton have gone from nearly falling out of the football league in 1997 to generally being accepted as one the very best run football clubs in all of world football. That's quite a rise. Since he purchased the club in 2009 they've gone from strength to strength on and off the pitch and climbed the pyramid all the way to the Premier League. Of course driven in part by putting his hands in his pockets but in doing so he's generated hundreds of millions of pounds in player sales. This is the model that every smaller club hope to imitate but few can actually do it and even those who can do it to a certain extent certainly don't do it as well as Blooms companies. 

So what is the secret ingredient? Well to be fair if we knew that then it wouldn't be a secret. The best guess is the approach to their analytical data and the mapping of players over a number of years trying to find shared characteristics and patterns. Say you track a player from the age of 15 through to 23 and by the eighth year they're really making waves. Now you may have been fortunate enough to have identified him early on but the modelling can be used to map onto other younger players. You're not trying to find another 23 year old player in the world who can potentially do the same thing, you're looking for the 15 year old who you're betting will follow the same career trajectory in eight season's time. If you can do it in an untapped market all the better. Think Moisés Caicedo as an example, the 24 year old Ecuadorian midfielder now with Chelsea. He was signed by Brighton for an undisclosed fee although the New York Times suggests that it was for around £4m with a sell-on clause of 20%. If we assume that's 20% of transfer profit minus the £4m initially paid then Brighton would have been left with £68.8m on the balance sheet having sold him to Chelsea for £100m. They were reported to have agreed a figure of £111m with Liverpool prior to that. Maybe the figure is closer to £55m by the time you deduct solidarity payments, agents fees et al, but still it's an impressive piece of business nonetheless and far from a one off. 

This work is being done through Blooms company Jamestown Analytics. They also work with Como in Serie A who have just qualified for the Champions League and they're partnered up with Hearts in Scotland. Clearly it's being paying dividends for all three clubs, though all three clubs are going to be dipping their rods into very different markets given their various resources. I imagine to Como’s owners Tony Bloom looks like he's not got two brass farthings to rub together but from a footballing standpoint, Premier League money trumps Serie A money even when combined with next season's Champions League. But we're supposed to be dealing with Hearts £24m. Oh probably should also note that the company data is also used by Union Saint-Gilloise who with Blooms investment went from the Belgian second division to the top flight to become league champions despite the financial power of Club Brugge. 

Sidenote - Como have of course identified and attempted to buy two of Sporting's starting XI in the past twelve months: Fresneda and Geny. 

Now it's worth noting that Hearts are a majority fan owned club. They hold around 75% of the voting rights owing to a world where not all shares are equal (think Glazers at Manchester United). If we ever play Hearts in pre-season I'll do the full story of Vladimir Romanov and how he took the club into administration. Long story short - bad owner. They've a wonderful lady called Ann Budge to thank for stepping in and ensuring they didn't end up doing a Boavista in May of 2014. Thanks to the combined efforts of her and the fans the club, like Brighton before, has fought its way back from the brink. Fast forward to June 2015 and Tony Bloom paid £9.86m for a 29% stake in the club and put into place a ten year plan for the then to try to change the landscape of Scottish football and bring the title back to Edinburgh. Incredibly they nearly achieved the feet in ten months. They also have to thank Scottish investor James Anderson who had donated large sums to the club and who in turn helped bridge the deal that brought Jamestown Analytics to the table. So whilst fan owned, they're not fan run and whilst Blooms shares don't allow him any voting rights it's clear that they do pay very close attention to what his data company says. 

The basic structure of the clubs isn't exactly rocket engineering. Rather than employing a coach who brings in his own backroom team, Brighton instead employ the backroom team who stay constant even if the mister changes. Whoever comes in to replace the mister has to fit their model and style of playing. Round pegs for round holes. That way you're avoiding squads from different types of coaches who bring in players to fit different styles which is basically what did for West Ham in the Premier League last season. Continuity is a critical key. Rui Borges in theory is part of a very long term plan over several years. Whether he is given that time remains to move scene. But if you do it right and it brings success then losing the coach because they want to progress becomes less of an issue. Because you want other clubs to court what you have. If you're firing coaches because of results then your model isn't setup correctly. 

I don't know enough about Scottish football to say Celtic have become lazy in their approach to recruitment but they've had it pretty much their own way for the next part of a decade. So when you get a disrupter like Bloom come in and close a 38 point gap in one season with a budget one fifth of the size of Celtics then it should have been a wake up call for the board. I know enough to know fans haven't been happy with the ownership for a long time and transfers have been one of the most contentious issues. They've just hired Martin O’Neill in his seventies as the full time manager. It doesn't present a plan for the long term does it though perhaps Nancy was that plan and once bitten twice shy. You imagine after what Hearts did last season that Paddy Power won't be paying out on Celtic as league title winners two games into this next season that's for certain. If they're not paying attention though at some point in the next ten years you can imagine that Bloom helps turn the tide helped by signings like the Portuguese forward Cláudio Braga who scored 17 goals in 44 appearances having been lifted from the Norwegian second division for £432,000. He's clearly not about to be sold on for Caicedo level money but say he moves for €5-€6m that's a significant return on their investment and the more gems they unearth the better chance of remaining financially stable most importantly but also of closing the gap long term to the likes of Rangers and Celtic and not breaking the bank to do so. Again like with Brighton they're looking for the right mister to fit the club and look to have found the right man in Derek McInnes who garnered his reputation with Bristol City, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock. If he's got some sense he'll buy into the project long-term (note since I wrote that he's already left to become manager of Rangers). Truthfully we'll have to wait to see if and how it all pays dividends for Hearts and everyone associated but if you're a Celtic fan you should be worried. I guess there's always a possibility that Bloom partners with a club in Portugal. Given they have the benefit of connections with the South American market that other countries don't have, it wouldn't come as the greatest surprise in the world. 

So twelve months on and Sporting have the same mister but this time around aren't the Portuguese Champions. I will fully admit to being left quite nervous after we lost 2-0 last year because there weren't many signs the players were settling into Rui Borges new system with any level of competency. Yet by the first game away to Casa Pia something had clicked. The difference between the Celtic game and that one was night and day. You have to hope that they put on a much better account of themselves the time but in truth these things matter little other than getting players up to full fitness and giving the youngsters a chance to impress and try win a place in the first team squad. Rumours circulating that Bafdili will be given a chance to impress. You'd imagine that Blopa and Gonçalves will be afforded similar opportunities but you never know with this club. It's a constant carousel, Travossos was widely tipped to come back and have a big part to play and he'll start the campaign in the red and white of Sporting Braga. You could have said the same thing after loan moves for Essugo and Fernandes. Going back to recruitment it's clear that we've gotten it spectacularly wrong the last two seasons. We've lost one half of the midfield pairing of Morita and Hjulmand after the Japanese ran his contract down. Few expect the Dane to still be in the colours of Sporting by the time this game is played but his exit, if and when it comes, will be handled in a much more dignified manner than the exit of Gyökeres twelve months ago. Part of me wonders if Mrs Hjulmand now with a small child might have a large say in whether he does leave or not. Stranger things have happened and there's more to life than money. Happy wife, happy life. 

We definitely need someone capable of finding the net regularly alongside Suárez. Be that Zalazar or Ioannidis. We cannot afford to be in the same situation as last season where you're reliant on Nel because one of your forwards is injured and the other is suspended for hand wringing gesture. Gonçalves looked a shadow of his former self last season and it's definitely time for him to say goodbye. For all Trincão's quality he still doesn't score enough and you always have the danger that him, Geny and Fresneda end up occupying the same space. At the end of the season I thought talk of him leaving was ridiculous given they'd spent all that time getting him to agree to a new contract and I wouldn't have been surprised to see him with the captain's armband but money talks at the end of the day. 

I'll settle for players who can stay fit for a season more than anything right now. Not sure I can take a third season of injury crisis' again. The signing of Silas Anderson is a return to the Scandinavian model which seems to have paid dividends so far with Gyökeres, Hjulmand and Harder. Pedro Lima knows the league though there's always a danger with buying players from relegated clubs and whether their mentality is right for what you need. Winning is a habit and it's not one he's possessed at one of the worst teams in top flight history. You fear he might be the new Kochorashvili. Doumbia one assumes fits into the same thinking of when Hjulmand came in from Lecce. Yet he's another like Debast, Fresneda, Alisson Santos, Vagiannidis and so on who come highly rated but all of whom have a rick in their game. It's a question of whether you can iron them out long term? I'd certainly be happy enough to see youngsters given more opportunities than signing the likes of a Mangas or a Faye again. I have certainly never believed that the club will seriously go in for Yeremay at Deportivo either having been unprepared to pay what the Spanish club wanted for him last summer. Now he's got a €150m release clause if they don't want to sell him they don't have to because no one can rock up and just buy him out of it. Besides, if your ambition is to play for Barca or Real Madrid then you're best suited playing in La Liga under their noses and proving you can do it. 

I'd quite like an experienced centre back if there's one floating around on the market. Second season Rui Silva appears to be going the way Adan did in the end of his career with the Lions so a new goalkeeper probably wouldn't go amiss. 

We can expect Fresneda, Geny, Diomande and Araújo to still be here next summer. We've had over the past two seasons guarantees that Gyökeres and Hjulmand would only be allowed to leave for their termination clause and no club paid that in either 2024 with the Swede or 2025 with the Dane so I expect that to hold true for this summer with all four players in turn. Araújo has certainly already been on the record in regards to his intentions of staying and how he's looking forward to playing Champions League football and alongside fellow Uruguayan and new summer signing Rodrigo Zalazar.