His name and photo are everywhere. Cristiano Ronaldo is the figurehead of Sporting’s training program. Inaugurated in June 2002, the Academy was born from the dream of the president at the time, José Roquette, who wanted Sporting to be as sustainable as possible, focusing on players detected, born and raised at the club. This vision was also supported by the qualities of Aurélio Pereira in the early detection of talents, many of them in so-called street football, which practically no longer exists today, but which Sporting is trying to recreate in its academy.
More than twenty years after its inauguration, le Sporting opened the doors of its academy to Flashscore. Photos of golden balloons Luís Figo et Cristiano Ronaldo seem to welcome new players, in particular, when they walk through the door to the training wing.
Golden balloons at reception
At the entrance to the canteen, a fresco represents the eighty-eight players trained at Alcochete who have already made their first team debut. There is always a free place that says : “You could be next.” Elsewhere, a photo of the “Aureliens“, the dozen players trained at the club who were European champions in France during Euro 2016. Enough to remind the young players who walk the corridors of the training wing that Sporting, in addition to being a great club, has a huge capacity to launch talents in Portuguese football and around the world.
“These are important steps in our development“, declared to Flashscore the co-director general of the Academy, Tomaz Morais. Names, which are linked to history “contribute not only to attracting talent, but also to the responsibility of the more than two hundred people who currently work in youth football, because the fact that Sporting has contributed in the past to the development of two Ballons d’Or, Luís Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo, the latter continuing to excel and break records, gives us an even greater responsibility to leave our mark every day and on all the players who pass through here. We want people to feel that, apart from the weight of these two names, there have been excellent players here, not only in the past, but also in the present, like Nuno Mendeswho plays for Paris Saint-Germain”.
“We are doing excellent work here, so that excellent players come out. First for the Sporting team, but also for world football“, underlined Morais.
João Simõesone of the latest examples
João Simões is one of the most recent examples of success. A little over a year into his first-team career, he has already played more matches in the Champions League than in the league and speaks with great admiration of the quality of a team that allows one to reach the heights.
“This is an excellent reflection of the formation of Sporting. It’s not just Figo and Cristiano and those who have been European champions, but also others like Nuno Mendes, Eduardo Quaresma, Gonçalo Inácio, shift and so many others. The training side mural shows the quality and talent that exists here“, the Lions midfielder told Flashscore.
For those who walk through that door for the first time at the age of 14, the impact of names and titles is the first approach to conveying the values that have brought them to a level of success that few can achieve.
“We are proud of this and we transmit these values to all levels and to everything they represent. Naturally, Cristiano Ronaldo is the most important value“, Filipe Santos, the coach of the under-14s, told Flashscore.
“When Cristiano started playing professionally, none of these kids had been born. Work, humility and professionalism can lead to a long career like that of Cristiano, who, at 40, is still at a very high level. That’s why we have set up several departments to help it develop, such as performance, nutrition, psychology and technical area. We adults are all involved so that a child can develop in all aspects and go far. It is this example that gives its name to the academy, it is the best and greatest example of what our club is, but also our country“, he added.
Pa of Cristiano Ronaldo clones
Sporting is not trying to produce clones of Cristiano Ronaldo, because he is unique, but it is trying to introduce certain principles in young people that can improve what exists genetically in each of them. It is a player-based model that has been awarded by the European Club Association in the youth football category.
According to Morais,this is a non-negotiable model“, based on “the individual differentiation of each player. We believe that, until we bring the player to the highest level – where it is about winning – in training, victories are much more than the sporting result at the end of a match. In high-level sport, we work for a team: team rules, team results. In training, it is the opposite: it is the player who counts. It is what he develops at the end of the day, It’s what he grows at the end of the day. It’s having in mind that we exist to develop players. It’s the alignment of all the departmental areas created so that he can develop, first as a person – the basic characteristic of the model – and then as a player. We believe that if he is a good person, well built, well implemented in what he does, he will be very close to being a good player. We don’t think it’s possible. This is how we work internally and how we train for this model. And then there is the technical intervention. In training, we talk about a coach who is an educator, a trainer, an example of behavior – because he is the mirror of the young person. There is no player in training for whom the coach has not been someone special for life.“
“More than a team coach, he is the coach of Sporting. That’s the big difference. He must be able to look at the forest, all the players, and not just the eleven he is going to play or the squad for the season. For me it was a big victory at Sporting: believing in the process and working on the process. And then there are the technical decisions of our player transition model: very internal, very calm, very personal, confidential. The guideline given to the player, the choice of the appropriate competitive context – playing at level A or B, if he needs more adversity or less, if he needs more difficulty – is the secret of the process“, Morais revealed.
“This has allowed us to speed up the process for certain players in recent years. I’m not just talking about Quenda, I’m not just talking about Salvador BlopaI’m talking about other players who appeared in the first team, some are still there, others have moved to top European clubs. That’s because, at the right time, we gave the player the strategic development curve he needed. And this sometimes harms sporting results, because we remove players from a level. Just look at the B team: many could play in the national youth team and we are giving them a chance in Ligue 2 and, what’s more, the team is at the top, with very young players. So this is the player-centric model“, concludes Morais.
Recreating what Aurélio Pereira was passionate about
Much of this process involves the individual development department, led by Raul Ribeiro. A department born almost in anonymity, but which involves more and more people and which aims to extend to all existing academies in Portugal, since it starts with younger and younger players.
“This is a complement to team training. We isolate certain actions and certain technical gestures so that they are more frequent in our training, which is not always the case in collective training. We focus on the things we want to see happen more often. We prepare them to get closer to an elite level. The level of complexity varies throughout the training program, depending on age and level” he told Flashscore.
It is a sector which is part of the continuity of the heritage left by Aurelio Pereirapassionate about street football, where he discovered great talents in school playgrounds or in street games.
“We are also its defenders. Today, we play less and less and this limits the bodily freedom necessary to play football at the highest level. We have a space dedicated to this – pitch 7 – where players experience contexts similar to those of street football. They do not train the formal game, but everything they need to make the game more fluid: footvolley, teqball, futeténis, reduced games with different stimuli. Each exercise is designed to promote certain gestures and degrees of freedom of the body. We want to free players from these constraints. We want the player’s body to have been exposed to maximum stimuli by the end of the training process. Let the body understand everything that is happening. Our “zero theme” is the relationship with the ball – the ball is an extension of the body and not a problem to be solved. Treat the ball like you. I believe a lot in development. João Simões, Blopa and Quenda were not born like this. We want to give them more weapons to use in the game. If they are very good at dribbling and running on their strong foot, we need to give them the means to be unpredictable or have more solutions to solve a particular problem. Development takes time. We want all the pieces to fit together at the end of the training program, to create strong players, ready to respond to the problems of the game without losing their balance“, said the coach.
A renewed academy
The base of the Cristiano Ronaldo Academy has not undergone many external changes. There is a wing for professional football, with the exclusive use of two pitches, and another for training, with four natural pitches and two synthetic pitches. Of course, twenty years after its inauguration, the needs are different. There are more teams, more players and more space.
However, there are plans for expansion, and not necessarily in the space it currently occupies, although a project has already been made public, but so far it has been swallowed up by bureaucracy and affected by electoral laws, and it has been slow to see the light of day, which has pushed those responsible for the Sporting to look for alternatives.
“As we know, sports training and football are very dynamic and Sporting has developed a lot in this area. We want to continue to grow and expand with more land. However, as we have done, we are investigating other geographical areas where we could establish Sporting academies, particularly near urban centers where Sporting Norte (Santo Tirso), Coimbra, Aveiro and the Algarve are already operating very well. Talent is everywhere and we will always have to be on the lookout. In Lisbon, at the University Stadium, we invest a lot in infrastructure, because we have our players there up to U-13. We are currently carrying out renovation works and we intend to extend these changes to the buildings and stands that support the fields in 2026. We want to offer our players, whatever their age, the best conditions for preparation and competition“, explains Morais.
However, the Academy’s work does not stop there. “When we use the term Academy here at Sporting, it is much more than that: it is a heritage of training. We talk about organization, leadership, methodology and processes. It is an academy with its original face, but completely renovated inside, and with more fields. And above all, the quality of the fields. Today, the professional football fields and the field of the Aurélio Pereira stadium are hybrid fields of the latest generation. It is a field which, as we said, is level 10. We now have, in a terminal phase, locker rooms: a locker room for each team, which the Academy did not have More modern locker rooms In terms of space, we cannot go too far, because it is the space that exists, it is the space with which we have to work.“added the director.
400 million profits
The Cristiano Ronaldo academy created 27 players, whose registrations were exchanged until last March, and who brought in almost 400 million euros, Geovany Quenda being the most appreciated and already exchanged to Chelsea for 51 million euros. The academy has already played 88 players for the first team, around half of them in the last eight years – some with more success, others with less, but currently 13 players from the academy are part of the A team.
There are many who are left behind and who will never realize the dream of João Simõesalthough nothing is yet guaranteed. “It’s a dream come true, but that doesn’t mean that the journey is over. It’s a long journey, with a lot of difficulties. Many people try to get there and don’t succeed. You have to keep your feet on the ground, take care and listen to the experts. It’s only by listening to your elders that you get there“, the young midfielder told Flashscore .
However, not being able to sign a professional contract does not mean the dream is over. THE Sporting continues to follow players, even those who have been fired, and sometimes they come back, as Morais explains: “All players are tracked. Our network of observers is everywhere. We never leave our players. Even a player who belongs to us and whom we let go temporarily to another club, even a player whom we let leave permanently, or even a player who has not joined the club: they are always monitored.
We explain that the journey doesn’t end there and we give examples of players who left, grew up in other contexts and even returned. No one has a crystal ball, but we always try to envision the best path. Our goal is their well-being and happiness.”
And this well-being begins with everything that the Cristiano Ronaldo Academy offers its young people.
“The goal is to develop players, but a good player always implies the development of a good man“, adds Morais.
“Training is a long-term project, a marathon. And the marathon is done with consistency. The more consistent your son is in different aspects of his life, the more likely he is to achieve his dream. But we’re also preparing the player for something they might not have. This is Sporting’s great investment: complete training. Give him the opportunity not to be a player, but to have a place in the job market and to succeed in another field. That’s our goal: for him to succeed in what he does and to be happy. Parents know it. And we ourselves have our own expectations. Everyone will be a man and that is our great specialty: one day we meet this person and we say: ‘Excellent’, he is an excellent student, an excellent mechanic, an excellent doctor, an excellent professional, an excellent father. Some help football in other areas“, explains the director of León.
There is one thing that has not changed over the years: the complicity of young players with the Academy. Each time they reach the first team, they are followed by their comrades who have not yet reached that level.
“I often talk to children. I ask them how they are, how school is going, I give them advice and sometimes I give them a hard time when necessary. It’s important to remember where I come from and be there for them. We are normal people. I put myself in their shoes and I would like someone from the first team to come and talk to me“, explain João Simões.
This support is due, according to Morais, to a set of values transmitted from a very young age at the Academy : “It is a trademark of Sporting, very difficult to explain, because you have to feel it, see it, live it, to realize the quality of the way in which we give, humanly, a dimension to our values.“.
The vision of José Roquette gave birth to the first football academy in Portugal. Today, the challenges are different, but the principles that made this dream come true remain intact. Talents continue to emerge from the academy every day, as once said Cristiano Ronaldo : “I wish you success and congratulate you on everything you have accomplished. I am proud to give my name to the Academy“.
