Manchester City are bracing for a huge change at the end of the season after it emerged that director of football Txiki Begiristain is set to leave the club next summer.
The Spaniard has been at the club since 2012 and has been instrumental to the club’s success in recent years and was a key figure in bringing his former club and country team-mate Pep Guardiola to the club in 2016.
The 60-year-old’s impending departure comes at a key time for the club, with uncertainty over Guardiola’s future as he enters the final months of his contract, while the hearing into their 115 charges of allegedly breaching financial rules continues. Finding the right successor to Bergiristain, therefore, will be vital.
Who is prospective new Manchester City sporting director Hugo Viana?
Soon after news of Begiristain’s impending departure broke, journalist Fabrizio Romano has reported that Sporting CP director Hugo Viana is the club’s ‘favourite candidate’ to succeed the former Barcelona man.
So who is Viana? And what track record does he have as a sporting director?
Viana’s name will ring a bell for English fans of a certain age, due to his four-year spell at Newcastle United 20 years ago.
The Magpies spent £8.5million to sign the 19-year-old Viana from Sporting in 2002 following a breakthrough season in the Primeira Liga. Notably, this was the first major deal that Portuguese super agent Jorge Mendes brokered with an English club.
Viana was seen as a successor to Gary Speed in the Newcastle midfield, but found himself unable to usurp the Wales international and competed with the likes of Kieron Dyer, Jermaine Jenas and Laurent Robert for a place in the team before he returned to Sporting on loan in July 2004.
Another loan spell at Valencia came for the 2005/06 season and he would then sign permanently for Los Ches, having made 56 appearances and netting two goals for Newcastle.
Spells at Osasuna and Braga followed before he finished in his career in the Middle East with Al Ahli and the Al-Wasl. Viana would also win 29 Portuguese caps, scoring once.
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He would hang up his boots in 2016 and began his next career as a sporting director the following year with Belenenses, leaving after just six months, but returned to Sporting as their director of football in 2018.
He would quickly make a name for himself at the Lisbon club, who won their first league title for 19 years in 2021 and regained this title last season.
Key to their success has been Viana’s shrewd work in the transfer market. The club have operated at a €200million profit over the past five years, thanks to the big-money sales of the likes of Manuel Ugarte, Pedro Porro, Bruno Fernandes and Matheus Nunes.
Sporting’s current squad also includes a host of players who have seen their values rise significantly, including Morten Hjumland, Viktor Gyokeres, Marcus Edwards, Ousmane Diomande and Goncalo Inacio.
Viana’s credentials in the transfer market are likely to be a key reason why he has emerged at the top of City’s wishlist at what feels like a key time for the club.
Should Viana land the job, he would be the latest in a series of former players who plied their trade in the Premier League in the early 2000s to move into similar positions in recent seasons.
Arsenal have had their former midfielder Edu in place since 2022, while ex-Blackburn Rovers and Leeds United winger Jason Wilcox landed the technical director role at Manchester United in the summer and Liverpool appointed former Bournemouth and Portsmouth midfielder Richard Hughes as their sporting director in June.
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