The Mask of Zorro
On Sunday afternoon I wrote an additional piece for my Manchester United post discussing the situation of the two Manchester clubs at present and mentioned in passing Frederico Varandas and the then mister Rui Borges. In my mind I was thinking that the club president was a sensible man who wouldn't kowtow to the pressure of certain sections of the fanbase and dispense with the services of the coach which as always proves how little I know. We are all well aware that football is a now primarily run as a business, the sporting aspect has become secondary. To that end, in my mind when you've got your hands on the goose that has laid the golden egg which added tens of millions of Euros onto the clubs balance sheet in last season's Champions League I really didn't think they'd pull the plug on him. Despite everything domestically, Borges in my mind was still more than capable of adding more to the €4m already banked after three matches played in this seasons competition and that's not including the money you get for competiting and progressing in the competition which is significantly more.
Now I don't pay attention to the rumour mill. OK, maybe that's not true, maybe that should read that I don't put any weight on the rumour mill because I'd seen the name of Paulo Fonseca being bandied about but I wasn't paying it any attention. Therefore I was genuinely blindsided when Varandas pulled the trigger and killed the goose that's been laying the golden eggs. It all feels very Bruno de Carvalho and Jorge Jesus to me. I'm struggling to understand the rationale behind the decision especially when you consider the financial numbers involved in the move. I don't know what the compensation package will be for Rui Borges and his team but it's likely to run into the millions. You've €5m paid to Lyon for the new misters services and a reported annual salary of €6m on top which happens to also be what de Carvalho was paying Jorge Jesus and we know how well that one went.
This isn't the Premier League, it's the Primeira Liga, every place in the table isnt worth the best part of £3m to your bottom line. There is no financial reward for your league place other than securing European football the following season and that will be determined by which, if any competition you're playing in. Had we been sat in 10th position after ten games then I could maybe understand pulling the trigger. Yet as I've written before Portuguese football is absolutely brutal, or at least it is if you're a coach of one of Os Três Grandes. Because we've just fired a mister who lost 3 league games out of the 63 he took charge of. In pretty much any other league in the world you'd be hailed as a genius - not in Portugal though. You suffer a shock loss to a newly promoted side and the wheels of change are set in motion. This a side owned by a tech billionaire I hasten to add and despite the respective sizes of the two clubs fans bases, given Sporting are sócios owned, by virtue of wealth of owners the lions are actually the minnows but that's by the by. Coming up to fifty years of age I can now take defeat on the chin, it doesn't ruin my week. That loss doesn't suddenly negate everything the mister had achieved. I fully recognise he's had his best players sold from underneath him and replaced with a set of young promising players who haven't yet fully gelled on the pitch. They're not far off it though and I've seen far, far worse sides in the green and white in all my years of watching and I peronsally didn't once call for his head.
There are clearly variables in football that you can control and those that you cannot. Decisions on the pitch will go for and against you, that's a given. In terms of expected points last season had they come to fruition then the lions would have won a third straight title. Yet football doesn't work like that. Statistically being the best doesn't mean a thing if you're not scoring taking the chances at one end of the field and keeping them out at the other. We still finished runners up and we can point to the moments where the title was lost, the four dropped points against Sporting Braga from winning positions, draws against AVS land Tondela. Move those four games into the win column and you've a third straight league title. Note those words - lost the title, because you could easily argue that case. Porto weren't the best team in the division last season in Portugal. This bizarre top flight is generally won every season by the side who makes the least fuck ups against the smaller teams. Bizarelly the league seems to get at least one additional billionaire owner ever season and yet the quality seems to deteriorate every campaign. I digress - It didn't happen though but no one died at the end of it all. The club gave their all but came up short, that's football. Only one team can win the league every season. Truthfully the jubilation of winning a league title as a fan didn't last much more than a day or two and the disappointment of not winning a third was never really any issue for me at all. There's was nothing for me to put to bed because I didn't expect us to win the title. In all honesty I've never once expected us to win the title. I'd seen us come close pre-Amorim and had my hopes rise but the older you get, hopefully the wiser you get, which brings me back full circle to the start in trying to figure out the rationale of employing Paulo Fonseca and in turn the financial implications for the club. Those figures may not be much in comparison to a Premier League team, but in Portugal that's a huge outlay of capital. I've written extensively this year about Bruno de Carvalho and his decision to employ Jorge Jesus and how that blew up in his face and my initial reaction is that this could very well become an echo of the same situation. We all know history repeats itself across every walk of life. There's no guarantees in football and nothing to suggest that firing Borges and hiring Fonseca will change anything at all. In fact there's a distinct possibility that it could have the opposite effect and things get worse and one day Varandas will be sat questioning his judgemental at this precise moment in time thinking why on earth did I think that was the smart move? Of course I hope that's not the case, I want whoever is the mister to succeed, I just don't understand the rationale behind the decision. You could have spent a fraction on a new defensive coach to work in support of Borges' technical team and a psychologist to work on their mental fragility. Instead of investing large sums of money in young players you could have brought one or two older more experienced heads into the group. As I have already written above, what do I know? I don't see Fonseca overtaking Porto and Benfica by the end of May. I don't think he gives us a better chance of progressing in the Champions League or of winning the Taça da Liga. I hope I'm wrong on all counts.
If so was in Varandas’ shoes I'd have ridden the storm because a win against Shakhtar is worth €2 million and we may well win at teatime, but I'd suggest we were better placed to do it with Borges still in charge and in doing so that €2 million would bring in way more income than having the Juve Leo boycott the stands and throw their toys out of the pram. Porto won the battle this summer without Sporting even retaliating. Planted stories in the media, parts of the Sporting fanbase up in arms and the cracks just kept on widening. They promote this ridiculous narrative that it's us against the world whilst playing the old game of divide and conquer through the media and some of our fans fell for it hook like and sinker. All of the Luis Suárez stuff at the start of the season originates from a man who you can find a photo of online stood next to André Villas-Boas holding a Porto shirt with his name on the back. You've got fans who think they're fucking experts claiming Rafael Nel should be starting over the player that was the top goalscorer in Portugal last season. I imagine after he scored in a tenth straight game there were no more of their words left to eat. You'll be played so easily when you've no idea you're even being played. If there's unity then there's a much stronger chance you won't be divided. When there's no unity don't be surprised how easily you've managed to be conquered. You've left your front door wide open and just let people walk in.
Fonseca it would appear is the very antitheses of Borges. You're going from a calm, humble mister to an absolute fucking fire cracker. I'm guessing Varandas' rationale is if you want a war, fine we'll lower ourselves to you starting with a new general.
So who is the new mister Paulo Fonseca? Well much like the Moreirense Matchday post if you asked me the question without being able to research it first, I wouldn't be able to tell you an awful lot. He was the hipsters choice of coach for the longest period of time. He's certainly been linked with Premier League clubs but never been given an opportunity. He's been linked with West Ham on more than one occasion, noting that's when they were a Premier League club for anyone who wishes to be pendantic. I think you can throw the name of Newcastle United into that hat as well if memory serves me correctly. He had a disastrous spell as the mister of AC Milano in Italy. He's probably most famous for his lengthy ban in Ligue 1 after a Tête-à-tête with a referee. As I say he is the antithesis of Rui Borges. So on that brief synopsis my guess at Varandas' rationale in hiring him is that he wants to fight fire with fire and maybe give some of his squad a rocket up their arses. There must however have been cheaper ways of doing it.
Like Bruno de Carvalho he wasn't born in Portugal but Mozambique so he and Geny have something in common off the bat though I'm guessing their childhoods would have been very different indeed. I'm not aware of Fonseca having been the great nephew of a Portuguese Prime Minister however unlike BdC. He only moved to Portugal as a teenager where he became a professional footballer going on to have a rather low key career as a central defender making just 249 appearances over a 14 year span. He began with Barreirense in 1991 making 91 appearances before earning a move to FC Porto. They loaned him to Leça, Belenenses and Marítimo where he played 80 times combined over the three spells. He never made a first time appearance at Porto before he was sold to Vitória where he made 6 appearances and they sold him to Estrela where he played 72 times between 2000-2005 before hanging up his playing boots. Hardly the most glistening of playing careers it must be said. His Portuguese top flight career amounted to 111 matches.
He went straight into coaching in 2005 taking over the youth team at Estrela. His career as a first team coach began in 2007 when he went to 1° Dezembro. Between 2008 and 2013 he bounced around the Portuguese lower leagues moving to Odivelas, Pinhalnovense, Aves before finally landing in the top flight with Paços de Ferreira. In 2013 Porto took a chance on him after he led Paços to third place which remains their best ever top flight finish. Like Jorge Jesus at Sporting he won the Supertaça in his first game in charge, but by March 2014 had been bounced out the door.
Paços welcomed him back with open arms but he was unable to replicate the same success and they missed out on European football on the final day of the 2014/15 season and he left the club a second time to join Sporting Braga. He led Braga to the final of the Taça de Portugal where ironically he faced off against his old side Porto. Finishing 2-2 after 90 minutes and with no goals in extra time the game went to penalties and Braga won out 4-2 winning the competition for the first time in 50 years. They also reached the last 8 of the Europa League.
On May 31st, 2016 he's named as boss of Shakhtar Donetsk who at the time of writing the U19s are playing against and the men's team will face off against in a little over 5 hours time. Initially signing on a two year deal he'd stay for three seasons winning the Ukrainian league and cup double in each of the next three seasons. In 2017/18 they reached the round of 16 in the Champions League. His side beat Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and having promised to dress up as Zorro if they won he duly obliged at the next press conference.
June 2019 he rocked up at another of the lions Champions League opponents this season in the form of AS Roma. They finished fifth in Serie A and reached the semi finals of the Europa League the following season. Add Tottenham to the list of Premier League clubs who wanted him by the way, and it appears not only were negotiations taking place, they were pretty well advanced in June 2021 before they were scuppered either by tax issues or a change to wanting a more defensive coach depending on who you choose to believe. Transpires he was interviewed by Newcastle, not just linked, but you can also add Aston Villa to the list of clubs he was linked with.
June 2022 he goes to Ligue 1 taking over at Lille. They finished fourth in his second season before leaving by mutual consent in June 2024. Back to Serie A in June 2024 with AC Milano and put the door by December 2024. I did say it was disastrous. Finally onto Lyon on January 31st, 2025. On March 2nd some five weeks into his new role he was sent off by Benoît Millot at the end of a 2-1 home win against Brest in which his head made the slightest of contacts with the referees for which the French football federation gave him a 7 month ban preventing him from sitting on the bench or entering the clubs dressing room.
His highest win percentage as a coach came with Shakhtar at 74.22%. 56.76% at Porto his next best and overall a win record of 52.82%. Just for comparison Borges' league record at Sporting at the time of leaving was 69.84%.
So what the future brings under Fonseca is anyone's guess really. He's built a reputation for attacking football which is great but Rui Borges side had a goal difference of plus 99 during his spell in the league. Scoring goals has never really been the issue, it's stopping costly mistakes at the other end of the pitch that's been the undoing of Borges ultimately.
As a footnote Fonseca apparently a boyhood Sportinuista. Insert some generic comment about understanding the clubs DNA. He was also apparently in tears after the final whistle on Lyons last game. Real or crocodile?
