1.21 The Rise and Fall of Bruno de Carvalho: The Conclusion

To recap in our last post, Sporting Clube de Portugal had finally parted ways with their club president Bruno de Carvalho after an extraordinary General Assembly was called for members to ultimately be the ones to decide whether he should be allowed to continue in post. The people said no. I think it is safe to assume that most of us, if found in de Carvalho's position after the attacks at Alcochete, would have done the honourable thing and resigned. It's not like some of the club's board hadn't already acted in the correct manner. So in the end he had to be pushed and even then he didn't take the decision kindly. Quelle fucking surprise. His last parting gift turned out to be the hiring of Siniša Mihajlović as the mister and Augusta Inácio as general manager for football which cost the club another few million euros in compensation. I imagine the club's lawyers were always smiling during Bruno de Carvalho's time in charge and in fact were probably the only ones.

Well I promised you all fireworks and that was quite a display we were all treated to. From start to finish there were many times where it felt like it couldn't have been true. All of that which proceeded in the previous parts of the story surely couldn't all have happened to just the one organisation, Sporting Clube de Portugal? Whilst I reference events at other clubs for context, let us get this straight, it wasn't a time where you could feel proud of the club. I'm not talking about performances on the pitch. I'm fifty years old in a couple of years and I've watched teams lose games in virtually every which way under the sun. I'm now not at an age where I sulk all week until the next game after a loss. Not that the current side actually loses that much nowadays. Certainly nothing like the first few years I followed them. The difference between then and now truly is night and day. That being said I don't think I ever truly believed that I'd ever see us win the league. For the longest time I knew what it felt to be a Braga fan every season trying to smash through the glass ceiling. Then it finally happened, not once, or twice, but three times! Well bugger me. I suffer from OCD and my anxiety at times over the years even under Amorim was through the roof. They always felt particularly heightened during the Jorge Jesus era. I won't lie I quite enjoyed the football under Marco Silva but should he sign for Benfica this summer he will officially be dead to me. I've not cut my hair since we started winning league titles and refused to get it cut whilst we were still league champions. You think the guy waiting for five straight wins for Manchester United has problems? Mind you I'd have had a cold head for the best part of three years straight had I kept making the same bet as he did so long hair don't care and it's not going before the Taça de Portugal final at the end of this month. Anyways back to losing matches - When you study probability and variance in football then you know that nothing is certain in football which is equally true in life. I'm going to go off on another tangent now so apologies. It was clearly so much better when I was following the seasons and the court cases and not having a brain dump. I now work in local government and part of my job entails working with Councillors and I can promise you hand on heart that even at a local level there is a real danger that we put people in positions of power which do not have the slightest clue about what the role entails. We have some that think they know better than anyone else, who heed no warnings and don't listen to the advice dispensed to them by those people who are actually qualified and with a decade plus of experience. One of our basic legal hearings will cost the tax payer a minimum of £3,000 to be heard and I can probably count twenty examples over my time where cases shouldn't have even made it that far. Does anyone know where I'm going with all this yet? So one councillor having not taken the correct advice ended up with a £33,000 legal bill because people won't listen or be told. Some people always know best. Which seems a nice segue back to the main protagonist of our story, Bruno de Carvalho. A man who clearly always thought he knew best, for him it was my way or the high way. Everything under him felt like a gamble and moreover one that wasn't likely to pay off. I said it wasn't a time to feel proud of the club and I'm not just talking about the attacks happening under his watch. He's clearly not daft, but as I've already alluded to there's a real danger of voting people in positions of power when they don't fully know what they're doing. Running the roller-hockey division is training of sorts but you cannot have a combustible engine at the top of the structure backfiring every 30 days.

There was always a certain crassness to it all under de Carvalho. The way he got rid of Marco Silva is galling even to this day. The longer he stayed the more like President Trump he'd become. Nothing was ever his fault. Three misters sacked, each one another roll of the dice. Blame the players, do it in public, add a few swear words to boot. I didn't like him then and the more I've researched these posts I can confirm I like the man even less now.

Irrespective of the fact that Bruno de Carvalho was cleared of being the moral author of the attacks carried out on May 15th, 2018 that does not mean his actions during his time as club president did not directly or indirectly lead to them. It merely confirmed that he had not ordered him. At no point in the past few weeks of the researching and retelling of this story in which I've read tens of thousands of words across articles and court transcripts have I once read anywhere that de Carvalho condemned the attacks or the actions of those involved before he gave testimony in court which, for me, is a pretty damning indictment of the man's character. Certainly no indication of any remorse on his part or for the injuries both physical and mental suffered by those on the receiving end. In fact de Carvalho went to great lengths to paint himself as the real victim after everything that occurred. Frankly that beggar’s belief but it's hardly surprising given what I've so far learned about the man. 

I think it's obvious in hindsight given the lack of evidence provided that the prosecution had a very flimsy case against him, Nuno Mendes and Bruno Jacinto as the three parties they claimed to have had moral authorship of the attacks. So in that respect alone I can have sympathy for de Carvalho. That being said I don't find anywhere else in the sorry tale that gives me cause to provide him with any other sympathy on my part. Perhaps you feel different to me and you'd be entitled to your opinion but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there are few others apart from de Carvalho himself that would share it. 

Clearly there were lessons to be learned from the affair. Sporting as an institution has taken steps to curb their past levels of relationships with the claques and put a greater distance between themselves including specific charters in relation to their behaviour. The fact that the current club president Frederico Varandas was at the time the club doctor and bore witness to the attacks first hand will have played a direct part in that decision having been taken I'm sure. One assumes that invites are no longer extended to claques to have discussions with the current set of players which we established previously isn't something that occurs in other leagues such as the English tiers of football. 

In terms of the build up to the attacks, lines of communication failed, concerns went ignored such as those from Jacinto to Geraldes prior to the day of the attacks. However as we subsequently learned Geraldes was embroiled the same week in the Operação Cashball scandal. Efforts should have been made by Jacinto to inform other parties especially if he had any inkling of how bad the supporters group's displeasure and levels of animosity was. I think it is safe to suggest that during the meeting held two days after the defeat to Atlético that this much was already apparent and especially after the defeat in Marítimo, the events that happened after the game, the transfer to the team bus and finally at the airport. The reaction of some in a senior position fail to take any additional steps and precautions appears to have been nonchalant on their part at best and certainly negligent. That safe feeling that previous similar incidents had never led to such recriminations so why should these? But then again Bruno de Carvalho cannot claim he wasn't aware of the level of anger being levelled at some of his players. He tells Marcus Acuña that he's had Fernando Mendes ringing him wanting his home address. That wouldn't have been for a polite cup of tea and swap notes about their respective families now would it? So why wasn't extra security provided by de Carvalho? Well the reasons are clear and obvious because he was in a war with them himself and also busy accusing them of not giving it all for the shirt. As I've already said he has to take the lion share of the blame in all this. His behaviour was no better than that of the fans that attacked the players. He wilfully and deliberately ignored his duty of care to them. And why? Because they had the audacity to stand up to his bullying. Let's be honest here that's exactly what it was. Here is a collective group who wouldn't stand for his shit and when presented with that evidence he got the arse ache. He didn't like the fans questioning him any more than he did the players. It was a complete and utter disaster waiting to happen which had been boiling for weeks and could have been prevented by someone switching the kettle off and yes that does mean Bruno de Carvalho in that particular instance. The board should have acted sooner. He was out of control.

Common sense surely should have prevailed at some point just before the attacks. Those who journeyed must have had forewarning of the change in times of the training session having been swapped from the morning of the 15th to the afternoon otherwise they'd have arrived to find no one there. If Bruno Jacinto warned Ricardo Gonçalves of their imminent arrival only fifteen minutes beforehand would that have not acted as a warning sign to both parties? Why in fact had they bothered to communicate with the club liaison so late in their journey at all? A question that seems to have been left unanswered. In fact one of a great deal to have been left unanswered but that would have been because the court had in part been presented with the wrong case. Maybe the club held an internal investigation in the fall out to learn from the mistakes that occurred? Under de Carvalho you had to assume that wouldn't have been a priority but you'd hope it was high on the list for the new board. 

The attacks of course leave a sour taste in the mouth as bad as they did eight years ago. It was Varandas who described it as Sporting Clube de Portugal’s darkest ever day and you have to hope nothing ever comes close to beating it ever in the future or even remotely close. Throughout this process I've not only spoken about my own behaviour but had time in quieter moments to reflect further on my actions. I'd love to tell my entire sordid story and maybe one day I will but when and if I ever do it will come with a full countability for my actions. I've no idea what de Carvalho wrote in his book. One I don't speak Portuguese, two Amazon have sold out of copies and don't know when they'll be restocking it again. Funny that. Maybe he does apologise in that? Maybe he does take accountability for the mistakes that he made, but if he did, I imagine that it would have made the headlines at some point even if only in Portugal. As I've already alluded to, I've found no evidence of it. 

There are rare points where he comes out with some elements of credit such as being prepared to take on the issue of football agents. The hundreds of millions that flow from the game worldwide on an annual basis cannot be good for the game. Yet for now it remains a game that has to be played by all clubs. There are of course many reputable agents but there are many who act in a manner you could actually coin as being de Carvalhoin in nature. It's uncompromising behaviour with the end goal to benefit ones own aims rather than those of others. If toes need to be trodden on to achieve those desired outcomes then so be it. 

But overall it's a cautionary tale. One person alone cannot be given too much power. If they are however then they should be fully accountable for their actions which in de Carvalho's case he most certainly wasn't but eventually the club as an institution acted in the correct manner to ensure that he was. The right outcome was achieved in the end. 

I agree that the president should in their position be able to criticise players but that any criticism should firstly be constructive, certainly never vindictive in nature and importantly done behind closed doors with mediation available for all parties involved. As Battaglia reminded the fans at Madeira airport “we are all human.” Anger always leads to poor judgement. Been there, got the full wardrobe and in a range of colours for every season. In any organisation you need those around you who will say no and who are willing to take steps that are either preventative or at the very least ensure steps are made so that lessons are learned. Given de Carvalho's propensity for social media use in the months leading up to his April outbursts and suspension of 19 players, should someone at the club not have taken preventative steps to ensure something like that wouldn't have occured? Or maybe having once been described by the English press as the Portuguese Donald Trump, he'd chosen to surround himself with yes men and there was no one capable of reigning his erratic behaviour in. The irony of course being he was in many ways acting as an angry fan and a man whose ego was severely dented rather than what he should have been doing which was acting as the club president. And, the one fan who the prosecution tried to blame authorship of the attack on had actually gone the opposite direction. Perhaps Nuno Mendes had an inkling of where it was all heading and deliberately chose to distance himself from it all rather sensibly. In Marítimo he choose to not even attend the game and wasn't present at the airport. He's not in the WhatsApp groups where the attack was planned and in fact he'd ignored the ones he was in ever since the defeat. I think it's fair to suggest he knew something was coming and chose not to be a part of it. There's a different morality question however of whether of he did have some sort of inkling should he have raised his concerns? Those looking outside in would have a moral code that says yes, of course he should have raised it. Yet Claques are formed like a brotherhood and if you were in the same position you might find it very hard to have acted in what's perceived to have been the correct manner. All told though I'm merely surmising. Only Mendes knows for definite whether he at least had an inkling or in fact any knowledge at all of what was going to happen. It's hard to believe it in 2026 but at one stage in the past people did still talk to each other. None of this isn't to say that Nuno Mendes didn't sit down the week prior the game in Madeira with the likes of Fernando Mendes and hear that they had plans to take action. It may have happened on the flight over hence why Nuno chose not to attend the game but watch it in a café and we know he flew back the day after and not on the Sunday. All of it conjecture on my part but someone knows more than they've ever told and we'll most likely never know the full truth. This is a story with too many holes and too many questions that not only remain never answered but it appears never even asked in the first place. 

In part it's a tale about mental health and a timely reminder that it should be treated equally if not more so than a persons physical health. An organisation as large and encompassing such as Sporting Clube de Portugal should ensure all it's staff and players across all disciplines have access to the correct practitioners to help them when it's needed. OK so having said that, it is in fact the second point I have some degree of sympathy towards de Carvalho for. Again I'm not a qualified medical professional. I can give an opinion as to his mental state at points using my own experiences as a guide and I suspect I wouldn't be far wrong but it's probably safe to just suggest he was clearly troubled by certain events in his professional and personal life, especially in the last twelve months during his time as the club president. Look this is man who has had four failed marriages and whilst it's dangerous to assume he was the reason all four failed, if I was to put money on one of the two parties being at fault then my money would be on him even if the odds without added detail are a coin toss. The de Carvalho side of a two headed coin I'd surmise is heavier and yes one of these days one of my jokes is going to land me in trouble. 

In the present day it feels like an ideal opportunity for comparison between now and then. To reflect on how far the club has come since it's darkest hour eleven years ago. This for many is perceived as a season of failure because with success comes heightened expectations. Some fans will claim they were sold the dream of the three-peat and to you I'd suggest remembering that dreams are merely glorified hopes. Don't pin your hopes on them. All being well, we'll at least lift the Taça de Portugal at the end of the month but that will have to be earned, it's not a given. In fairness by the time you're reading this you'll know what the result was. For me, in the here and now I'm 3 hours and 18 minutes before kick off of the game at home to Vitória SC. For those or you with long memories remember how my own story began as a West Ham fan. If you want a story about really being sold a dream with a move to a new stadium and feeling cheated out of a brighter future then there's one to look at.

Context is everything. What might be perceived as a failure to last season's domestic double of league and cup can still be seen as sign as a huge progression under the current administration. That doesn't mean they've not still got work to do. Yet as I mentioned in a previous post in this modern era we've seen the board hold their hands up to their mistakes and admit they need to do better. De Carvalho on the other hand would have most likely fired Rui Borges and been onto the next mister come the end of May had he been in charge. You'd like to think that de Carvalho and his questionable behaviour belongs to a dying breed of club president's but it's still in action, thankfully not in the case of Sporting CP. Porto have birthed the new Pinto da Costa in André Villas-Boas. Whoever bullied him at school has a lot to answer for but remember way back when I said that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? Well we've all had a very long lesson in why, with the example of our own de Carvalho retold in these posts in intricate detail as to how we should proceed with caution. There's probably another 50,000 words I could have written but at some point I need to stop for my own sanity. I swear I've seen him in my dreams the past few days. 

At the end of it all, what really, really…REALLY baffles me about the attacks that came out in the testimony in the courts was those perpetrating them were physically assaulting the players whilst telling them that they better ensure that they won the Taça de Portugal the following Sunday. That someone decided to specifically attack the clubs top scorer Bas Dost in a manner that hurt him worse than any other player. Surely one of the 50 present would have gone woahhhhh woah woah. Stop. Lads, this isn't a good idea. If we injure them how are they going to play on Sunday? 

You wonder if things could have been very different had de Carvalho shown patience and not have had the ego he owned. Because ironically he was in the first two seasons quite good at picking coaching talent. Jardim went onto lead AS Monaco to a title, Marco Silva did the same with Olympiacos the very next season. Both continue to be highly respected coaches to this day. So much so that by the time you read this Marco Silva may well have been named as the new mister of rivals Benfica. But he didn't have the patience and that was the problem. Because maybe if he had he could have built the right foundations, but Rome wasn't built in a day and in the end as I mentioned in a previous post he was Nero playing the fiddle whilst it all burned.

I can't help but think that if he could he'd put himself up for re-election and in doing so would prove to the world that he'd learned nothing. Jack Pitt-Brooke was right, he is the Portuguese Donald Trump. Then again we could label André Villas-Boas as being cut from the same cloth. He'd give Joseph Goebbels a run for his money in the propaganda stakes. He's utterly delusional as a man and whilst de Carvalho may have sullied the good name of Sporting CP, André Villas-Boas is busy sullying the reputation of both the Portuguese league and the referees association. At some point the Portuguese FA needs to act in a manner that fully protects the games reputation and start to dock points because it's the only way it will stop it from happening. Clubs like Porto cannot be allowed to referee games they weren't involved in through the Portuguese courts. All these systems need to change. Every day it's like watching a public exercise in self masturbation from him and his club. Frankly if Varandas acted in the same manner I wouldn't condone it for a second, any more than I candone anything that happened under Bruno de Carvalho.

As a final point - At least the good thing is in the past two seasons the claques don't ever need to attack the players because most of them are fucking injured anyways.

So there was have it, the rise and fall of Bruno de Carvalho told in full technicolour glory. It feels like the story is done. Right? Let's do a quick mental checklist.. how he came to power, what happened on the pitch each season up to Alcochete, what happened during the attacks, the trials, how he was voted out. Throw in a few meetings, some very angry players and fans. I think we've pretty much covered everything. Except have we? Have we been telling the right story all the way through? You can find out in our next series of bonuses posts.