Following the announcement that Hugo Viana will replace Txiki Begiristain as Manchester City's director of football at the end of the season, European football expert Andy Brassell takes a look at the 41-year-old's career pathway from a player in Portugal to his success as a director of football.
Viana has never been a loud man; as a player, his class and finesse spoke for him and it does the same now he has "moved upstairs".
It is easily forgotten that Viana was one of the stars in the Sporting Clube de Portugal side that won the Portuguese Liga in 2002 alongside fellow teenager Cristiano Ronaldo. It has been strokes of his pen and decisions in the boardroom, rather than sweeps of his gifted left foot, that have taken Sporting back to the summit - and attracted Man City.
Newcastle United saw some of the latter qualities two decades ago. Viana's delicious free-kick at The Hawthorns, which earned Newcastle a 2-2 draw at West Bromwich Albion in the final match of 2002/03, dropped a hint of what could have been.
Viana made 39 Premier League appearances for Newcastle in total, scoring two goals and providing six assists in his four years at the club.
Even if England didn’t quite work out for him as a player, Viana’s time in the Premier League had a profound effect on him as he worked under Sir Bobby Robson, who made the then-European Young Footballer of the Year a personal project.
“He’s someone who has been very important in my career,” Viana told this writer back in 2011, when he was on his way to a UEFA Europa League final with Braga, where Viana and his team-mates would ultimately be defeated in the Dublin final by Andre Villas-Boas’ outstanding Porto team.
The lessons Viana learned in England helped him forge a successful playing career, notably at Valencia and Braga, despite being hampered by injuries, and he has continued to consume English football voraciously from afar ever since.
He has partly ended up following in the footsteps of his guide. Like Robson, Viana presided over a chaotic Sporting desperately in need of some tender loving care after arriving as sporting director in 2018. He had spent only six months in a similar role at Belenenses, some eight miles to the south of Sporting’s Estadio Jose Alvalade.
Unlike his English mentor Robson, who had been sacked as coach in December 1993 (and went on to enjoy huge success at rivals Porto), Viana was given time to work - and paid back president Frederico Varandas’ faith handsomely in the six subsequent years.
Indeed former Crystal Palace and Everton winger Yannick Bolasie, signed by Viana's Sporting in 2019, quipped that the sporting director “always had good talent ID”.
Identifying talent is one thing; developing it is another.
Viktor Gyokeres, who arrived from Championship club Coventry City for a reported club-record fee of €20million in the summer of 2023, is the most obvious current example, becoming one of the continent’s most coveted strikers after scoring 43 times last season.
Elsewhere, there is Morten Hjulmand, the Danish midfielder who also arrived that summer and has taken on the captaincy following the exit of Sebastian Coates, the long-serving former Liverpool defender. Hjulmand has adapted to the role seamlessly.
Yet Viana’s best signing at Sporting was not a player. He gambled on paying Braga a reported €10m release fee for Ruben Amorim in March 2020, when the then-35-year-old had only been in charge at Viana’s old club for a little over two months.
Only two coaches in history had cost more in compensation at the time - Villas-Boas and Brendan Rodgers. Amorim rewarded Viana with two titles in four years. The 2021 success was Sporting’s first since Viana's vintage some 19 years previously, and was followed by last season's 2023/24 triumph.
Amorim has helped develop Sporting into the best team in Portugal ahead of relative financial powerhouses Benfica and Porto.
He could not have done it without Viana, who has sold on players including Bruno Fernandes, Pedro Porro, Joao Palhinha and Manuel Ugarte at huge profits, replacing them with players such as Gyokeres, Hjulmand, Pedro Goncalves and Francisco Trincao, who could easily be the next big exports.
“Hugo Viana has already proved several times he knows how to make magic happen,” said Amorim last summer. “[He] is indispensable. He has a fundamental role here and works like nobody else.”
Varandas has spoken about his sporting director rejecting a series of approaches from “Europe’s top leagues” (despite admitting that the reserved Viana “will be annoyed at me saying this”).
It was always going to take a challenge the size of City to move Viana. Whether he is tasked with continuity or a rebuild at the Etihad Stadium, Viana has the sangfroid to find the right balance.
Andy Brassell (@andybrassell) is a writer specialising in European football.
