The timing of their former boss' move to Old Trafford sent the Portuguese champions into freefall and ruined a promising European campaign
Ruben Amorim didn't want to leave Sporting CP for Manchester United midway through the season. He knew that doing so would only make his task at Old Trafford even tougher. But United were insistent. They told him it was a case of "now or never".
"I had three days to make the decision," Amorim revealed in November. "That's what I did. If I rejected the job now, in six months I would not have got it. I didn't want to regret making this decision." One cannot help but wonder if he regrets it now, though.
Rather incredibly, United have actually managed to get worse since Amorim succeeded Erik ten Hag as the club's permanent manager three months ago. The 20-time champions of England have slipped to 15th in the Premier League standings after Sunday's 1-0 loss to fellow crisis club Tottenham – which was their eighth defeat in their last 12 top-flight games under their new boss. "Everything is going wrong," he lamented after the game in north London.
Likely compounding Amorim's misery is the fact that Sporting are also struggling without him. A team that looked certain to retain their Liga Portugal crown have come under serious pressure at the top of the table, while a Champions League campaign that promised so much is effectively already over going into Wednesday's play-off round second leg against Borussia Dortmund…
AFPGamble pays off
Amorim was a beloved figure at the Jose Alvalade, which is no mean feat given he'd spent the majority of his playing days representing Sporting's hated city rivals Benfica.
His appointment as coach in March 2020 was also met with serious scepticism among the supporters because he was so young and so experienced. Amorim was just 35 at the time and had only previously worked at third-tier Casa Pier, where he stood down after being suspended over lacking the required coaching credentials, and Braga, first with the club's reserves and then the senior squad.
So, Sporting's decision to pay €10 million ($12m) to secure his services – which made him the third-most expensive coach in the world – astounded many within the Portuguese game, particularly as the Lisbon outfit had become synonymous with wastefulness. Amorim looked like another expensive Sporting mistake. In reality, it was a game-changing masterstroke.
AdvertisementGetty Images Sport'It was written it had to be like this'
In his first full season at Sporting, Amorim ended the club's 19-year Liga drought. They reclaimed the title last year and, when he left for United, the Lions were rampaging towards a third, having won their first 11 games of the 2024-25 season.
Perhaps even more impressively, Sporting had also claimed 10 points from four matches in the Champions League, including a stunning 4-1 demolition of Manchester City that arrived just after he'd confirmed his intention to take over at Old Trafford.
"It was written it had to be like this," an ecstatic Amorim said after bidding an emotional farewell to the Alvalade with a statement win over Pep Guardiola that also generated a huge amount of excitement in Manchester. It was a bittersweet night for Sporting supporters, though, as they were understandably devastated by the timing of Amorim's exit.
AFPUnprecedented departure
Sporting president Frederico Varandas was just as disappointed by losing Amorim with a season already under way. As he was at pains to point out, the plan had always been for Amorim to leave at the end of the 2024-25 campaign, but he felt he was left with no option but to negotiate a premature departure after United made it clear that they would be willing to pay the coach's release clause.
"At the end of last season, Ruben Amorim, one of the best coaches in the history of Sporting, informed us that it would be time to end the cycle [in 2025]," Varandas explained at an awards ceremony in December. "He wanted to end with a second successive championship. It would be three championships in five years… Our coach would then accept a new project. Sporting would make a change. We would start a new cycle: end the season, two or three players leave, five or six come in, a new coach comes in and starts a new process, even with growing pains.
"We prepared the group for this and so we started the season, as we ended the previous one, with a well-oiled machine. Then, a big European club arrived and our coach accepted. From that point on, everything that was planned changed.
"So, Sporting did not choose the timing of the end of this cycle. The truth is that in November our coach left Sporting, what happened to Sporting has never happened in Portugal. It is the first time that a coach has left, due to success, in the middle of a season. Many coaches have left for higher leagues and projects, but a club has never lost a coach in the middle of the season."
AFPSuccession plan falls apart
Losing Amorim at such a delicate moment put Sporting in a very awkward position, as Varandas suddenly had to find a worthy replacement at relatively short notice, a top tactician that was not only available but also willing to take over a team that had seven games in 26 days coming up, meaning the incoming coach would haven't much time to impose his own footballing philosophy on the team.
For that reason, and the lack of strong external candidates, Varandas decided to look in-house and, on November 11, Sporting promoted reserve team coach Joao Pereira to the first team boss. Unlike Amorim's appointment, it proved a disastrous decision.
