Sérgio Conceição’s last stand at Porto does not need any extra needle or drama. But as the manager prepares for Tuesday night’s Champions League last 16 second leg against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium, 1-0 up from the first, it has got it all the same.
Porto are a club in turmoil. Uncertainty and conflict the watchwords and uncomfortable questions everywhere. The root cause is the presidential elections on 27 April when, at the age of 86, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa will stand for yet another term.
The longest serving president in world football first took office in 1982 and he has strolled back in over and over again. But now, as Porto contend with financial problems and debt, taking money upfront against the future sales of TV rights and season tickets, there is – for the first time in a long while – a serious alternative.
It is André Villas-Boas, the former Chelsea and Tottenham manager, who is Porto born and bred and an authentic club hero. He was the manager there for only one season but what a season it was. Villas-Boas’s 2010-11 team won the league by 21 points without losing – their record in full was P30 W27 D3 – while they added the Europa League and the Taça de Portugal.
Villas-Boas believes that Porto have listed alarmingly under the leadership of Pinto da Costa, with the flaws increasingly clear, including those in scouting and recruitment. Not everybody agrees and there have been attempts made to intimidate Villas-Boas. His campaign office has been vandalised and the walls of his family home spray painted with offensive graffiti. Then there was the episode in which the caretaker of the complex where he lives was violently attacked and had his car stolen.
The nadir was on 13 November at Porto’s general assembly when Ultras loyal to Pinto da Costa created a hostile atmosphere, threatening and beating up members who voiced opposition to proposed statute amendments. On 31 January, police arrested 12 of the alleged protagonists, including Fernando Madureira, the leader of the Super Dragões supporters group. He remains in prison on remand, awaiting trial.
According to the Porto district attorney general’s office, the charges against those arrested relate to assault, aggravated coercion and threats, and attacks on freedom of information. Cecília Pedroto, the widow of José Maria Pedroto, the Porto great who played for and managed the club, said it was imperative to “investigate the scenes of beatings, violence and members fleeing in fear of attacks”. She called it Porto’s “darkest day”. So did Villas-Boas.
Conceição is in his seventh season as manager. He made his name as a player at Porto, winning the league three times and the trophy count in his current role stands at 10, including three more league titles. Only one manager has won more in Portuguese football – Jorge Jesus with 12 trophies. In May last year, Conceição took charge of his 323rd Porto game, surpassing Pedroto’s club record. The second leg against Arsenal will be No 365.
This season has been relentlessly difficult, the off-field pressures playing their part. It is the job of a manager to insulate the squad but they can do only so much. Conceição will almost certainly leave in the summer and not just because he is out of contract, no talks having taken place over a new deal. It has not been possible while the identity of the next president is unclear.
It is because Conceição is approaching the end of a cycle; it is nearly time for a new challenge and he would surely like it to be at a club where not everything is such a struggle, where he could build over a longer period and not constantly have to sell his best players.
At Porto, Conceição has raised €573.45m via transfer fees, the list taking in numerous big deals, the most lucrative being Otávio’s €60m move to Al-Nassr last summer. Vitinha cost Paris Saint-Germain €41.5m in the summer of 2022; Luis Díaz went to Liverpool for €47m in January of that year; Éder Militão’s switch to Real Madrid was worth €50m in the summer of 2019. Conceição scores very highly in the success-relative-to-spend metric.
Porto are off the pace in the title race, seven points behind the leaders, Sporting, although their 5-0 home drubbing of second-placed Benfica on the Sunday before last was a tonic. They are into the semi-finals of the Taça de Portugal, where they will face Vitória Guimarães. But it is the Champions League that tantalises, all eyes on their attempt to eliminate an English club in the knockout phase for only the second time. The first was when José Mourinho oversaw the last-16 victory over Manchester United en route to lifting the trophy in 2003-04.
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Conceição’s burning ambition is to win the Champions League and he got his tactics spot on in the first leg against Arsenal, his 4-5-1/4-3-3 system compact but able to transition quickly; the defence suffocating. He had paid particular attention to stopping Martin Ødegaard individually and Arsenal as a collective on set pieces; both missions were accomplished.
Arsenal did not have a shot on target and what pleased Conceição was how his players executed a gameplan radically different from the one they normally have in domestic matches, when the opposition tend to park the bus. A further point is that Transfermarkt estimates the market value of Porto’s starting XI at €168m, which is €25m less than Arsenal committed on the signings of Declan Rice and Kai Havertz last summer.
All of which goes some way to explaining why Conceição was so incensed by a post-match comment from his Arsenal counterpart, Mikel Arteta, and the general reaction to the game in London, which leant on Porto’s employment of the dark arts. Arteta said Porto had “no intention of playing” and do not think for a second that Conceição is not motivated by the slight. Do Arsenal own the truth of how football should be played?
Conceição has long embraced the siege mentality at Porto – it is them and their city against the establishment in the capital, Lisbon, where the national media is based; Sporting and Benfica, too. He has always been an intensely passionate person, who uses adversity and conflict as fuel.
Growing up in Coimbra, money was extremely tight, and he experienced the trauma of losing his father at 16 and his mother shortly after. Football was everything and it was succeed or succeed; defeat brought out the worst in him and still does.
Conceição has attracted plenty of suitors on the back of his work at Porto, including Paris Saint-Germain, Napoli and Lazio, and last summer he turned down an approach from Al-Hilal that would have paid €34m over two years, with the option of an extra year. He is likely to be hot property this summer, doors opening and not only because he is a Jorge Mendes client. For now, though, only the Arsenal tie matters. It will be emotional.