FC Porto are one of the biggest clubs in the Portuguese Super League and one of the perennial powerhouses in the UEFA Champions League. MSE spoke with Porto academy scout Raúl Oliveira as he talked with MAF about the growth of the club internationally as well as the model that is implemented by the club.

Porto are both domestically and internationally as one of the most powerful clubs in Europe. The team's expectations will always be high and winning is always at the top of their list. "I can say to you that FC Porto is a winning club, for us being second is the same thing as being last… Since the younger ages we are trying to create winners, in football as in life," said FC Porto scout Raúl Oliveira.

"At FCP we are all the time searching for the best possible players to fit in our model of play and model of player… This is the base for my job at the club; I am scouting teams and players all over my living area and try to find new talents for the club in any age range. We have a few hundred scouts all over the world."
FC Porto is known as one of the biggest exporters of footballers throughout Europe. In the past few years alone they have developed and sold players the likes of Ricardo Carvalho (Chelsea FC), Hugo Almeida (Werder Bremen), Bruno Alves (FC Porto).

They have also had players that have become successful international players such as Vitor Baía, Domingos, Rui Barros, Secretário, Sergio Conceição, Jorge Costa and Fernando Couto. These players were a part of their 2004 Champions League winning side as well as their Intercontinental Cup conquerors. The testament to these players is that they were developed and bred in the Porto system from the time they were little boys.

"Our main skill is to bring into our professional team young talented players and maximize their forces. That’s what we made with players such as Deco (Chelsea), Diego (Juventus), Luis Fabiano (Sevilla), Anderson (Man. Utd.), Bosingwa (Chelsea), Pepe (Real Madrid), and a host of others."

Changes to youth program
Like many team in Europe and around the world, the dependency for foreign players has become important if they have any pretensions in international competition. If you talk about Porto, this team has become internationalized in the past couple of years. Players like Lisandro López to Lucho González, the club now has 15 out of 23 players coming from Argentina (Valeri, Belluschi, Prediguer, Costa, Farías), Brazil (Hulk, Helton, Maicon, Fernando), Romania (Sapunaru), Colombia (Guarín, Falcao), and Uruguay (Fucile, Pereira). These types of signings are the ones that limit the participation of youth players in Jesualdo Ferreira’s side. This is why Porto had to do something about that in order to continue growing and avoid some type of Real Madrid-type of exclusive dependency on the market and not seeing the hard work in their academy pay off.

“In the past couple of seasons, Porto has had very few “home made players” in their ranks despite their success. "At this moment in its professional team but we are trying to change this situation with a new project called Vision 611. That is producing lots of results in our younger teams," said Oliveira. "We are definitely trying to create our model of player into the future."

Due to “Vision 611” program in these last few years we adopted the Netherlands training methods, especially with the Coerver training method at the U-13 level.

Loan Program
Oliveira mentions that Porto has placed a model that is quite unique in the European leagues. "In spite of not having many players in our main team we do have a “loan players program” that is producing many results and we do have around 30 young players with a professional contract with the club and playing in Portuguese and foreign first division teams all around Europe. We do believe that this is in the best interest of our players and the club.

“FC Porto is a top European club so we are only interested in having the best possible professionals working for us including players, coaches, scouts… That´s why many of the players coming out from the academy sometimes do not have the chance to play as many times as they need in such an young stage of their playing career. FC Porto won 15 Portuguese championships in the last 21 years, also 2 Champions league trophies, 1 UEFA Cup final and 2 International Cups among other things, so as you can understand for us winning isn´t everything it´s the only thing,” said Oliveira.

Porto have in their president, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, one of the most influential individials in Portuguese football and his model seems to work. Every single year we do have a great action in the transfers market. In the last 10 years FCP had an income of players transfer over 350 million Euros… just to give you some examples:

Year Player Team Cost
2004 Ricardo Carvalho Chelsea € 30 million
Paulo Ferreira Chelsea € 20 million
Deco Barcelona € 20 million
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2005 Derlei, Costinha,
Maniche Dynamo Moscow € 30 million
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2007 Anderson Manchester Utd. € 30 million
Pepe Real Madrid € 30 million
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2008 Ricardo Quaresma Inter € 20 million
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2009 Luis González Oly.Marseille € 20 million
Cissokho,
Lisandro López Lyon € 40 million


In age of high rollers and big spenders, Porto have learned to walk that fine line between European importers and exporters while remaining competitive on multiple fronts. ¨We are a seller team so every season we are searching for new talents into our team and we also spend some amounts of money in new signings but nothing compared with many other big European clubs.¨

As you can imagine to be able to have this continuous players movement and to be able to continue as a winning team we need to have a really strong leadership in the club and that’s where our “home made players” are really, really important.

“They are built to be natural winners, true leaders. So even without playing a great role as star players they are some of the most important foundations of most of our victories. We have a great leaders school that’s for sure… We have a big focus on players scouting so if we are not able to “produce” the players that we need, we have to find them somewhere…”

Future Projects

The Porto academy continues to grow and the club realizes that the academy needs to expand their recruitment bases in order to maintain their status domestically and internationally. ¨We are studying the possibilities of creating some football schools or some “arrangements” with friendly clubs in order to have an open door into such an important markets as the Brazilian and African markets.¨ There is currently a big push for Porto to recruit in these markets because players in these regions will adapt easier to Portuguese culture and its idiosyncrasies because they do not have to deal with the language barrier.

Special thanks to Raúl Oliveira and the people at FC Porto for making this interview possible.