System perfected: Sporting’s multi-million factory is running at full speed

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In football the wheel is never reinvented. Despite data and AI-driven clubs (which are relatively unsuccessful). The functionality of almost all clubs outside the absolute top shots is always the same.

Sporting Lisbon also comes from this second guard. The club that is only called that in Germany. Everywhere else it is known only as Sporting Clube de Portugal, hence the abbreviation is also Sporting CP. Cup winner in 1964. UEFA Cup finalist in 2004 (they lost the final in the Alvalade against CSKA Moscow 1:3, very bitter!). 19-time champion. 17-time cup winner. Sporting is a polysport club and, after FC Barcelona, ​​the most successful in Europe across all sports. And with 106,000 members, one of the largest in the world.

And because Sporting is not one of the luxury clubs, the Lusitanians have to earn their money the old-fashioned way. Talking about training (or purchasing) young talent. With promotion and subsequent screening. And ultimately with sales. Like YB. But this happens two financial levels higher than in Bern, where the market value of the team is around 60 million euros. At Sporting it is 300 million!

Nunes, Pontelo, Gyökeres – the million dollar factory is up and running

Sporting is a multi-million dollar factory that has perfected the training club system. While at YB a top transfer yields around ten million, perhaps fifteen million euros, such as Fabian Rieder or Aurèle Amenda, the dimensions in the Portuguese capital are different. Example: Matheus Nunes (25) cost less than a million when he came over from Estoril in 2019. Three years later he went to Wolverhampton in the Premier League for 45(!). Just a year later he went to Manchester City for over 60. Sporting will certainly have earned it again. The bottom line is that there is at least 50 million euros left.

And the next nobody is already on the mat: Rafael Pontelo (20), a Brazilian who came over from Leixões in the winter for 700,000 euros, so from the second division. But it’s not always easy to get through it. The centre-back has played just one minute in the Portuguese league so far. Because not everyone ends up with the jackpot like Nunes did. Or do you know Luiz Phellype or Diogo Salomão? No of course not. Those were two flop transfers. Players who have never had the upper hand. Business risk. Collateral damage.

League top scorer Viktor Gyökeres (25), however, cost quite a bit of money. Sporting paid no less than 21 million euros to Coventry City for the Swedish-Hungarian team last summer. There was great belief in the striker, who has already collected 23 points (16 goals and 7 assists in 19 games), when Sporting signed him for a lot of money. And he immediately put a 100 million francs exit clause in his contract! The market value of the Swedish national player is already around 45 million euros. This means it has increased fivefold in eleven months! These are the sporty dimensions.

And by the way: Gyökeres scored five times in the last three games. We wish the YB defense a lot of fun!

Source : Blick