FC Porto women's football rising, nearing professional status | OneFootball

[few years, women's football, FC Porto, promotion, professionalization, conditions] Created last season, the senior women's football team of FC Porto immediately secured promotion from the 3rd to the 2nd Division in their debut. They are currently leading the championship qualification phase of this tier and, on Wednesday, they secured their spot in the final of the Portuguese Cup, where they will face Benfica. The team, launched by the direction of André Villas-Boas just a few months after his arrival as president of the dragons in April 2024, is thus on the path to the planned professionalization.

In media terms, qualifying for Jamor brings the young Porto players closer to much more established projects, such as those of Benfica, Sporting, and also Sp. Braga. However, from a competitive standpoint, the reality is different, and it is precisely this gap that FC Porto intends to narrow in the coming years. According to information gathered by Record, the growth plan for women's football at FC Porto was structured in three phases, with the next step being the consolidation of the main team as professional, something that has not yet happened at this moment.

Going back to the origin of the project, in 2024/25, when the senior level was launched, FC Porto focused mainly on young Portuguese players, some still minors, who also competed in the under-19 and under-17 teams, and many of them were second options for formations in the 1st and 2nd Divisions. The goal was not only to ensure competitiveness in the 3rd tier but also to lay the foundations for the future. With few financial resources to offer the athletes beyond residual amateur football subsidies, FC Porto tried to attract young talent through the ambition of the project and the strength of the club's brand. With the promotion achieved, the plan entered the second phase.

This season, the senior team began operating under a semi-professional regime. The group includes 10 professional athletes, and the rest are amateurs. The squad was thoroughly revamped, although part of the transitioned core was absorbed with the creation of the B team, competing in the 4th Division, which completes the structure of the modality, along with the under-19, under-17, under-15, under-13, under-11, and under-9 levels.

In the next season, especially if promotion to the BPI League is achieved, women's football may enter the consolidation phase. Still, without falling into excesses that would hastily bring the senior team's competitiveness closer to that of the rivals. For now, the dragons have raised the team's level with several signings, including Americans Cora Brendle, Eliza Turner, and Lily Bryant – the latter scoring the goal in the Cup semi-finals against V. Guimarães, which secured the 1-0 win – as well as Danish Laerke Tingleff, Slovak Lenka Mazachova, and French Mady Soumaré, in the winter market. Among the Portuguese, the acquisitions of Maria Negrão and Mariana Azevedo, both former Sp. Braga players, stand out.

Regarding national players, the blue and white ambition is, in the future, to also contribute to the National Team, although this is still a difficult goal to achieve in the short term, even due to the level of competition. Nevertheless, FC Porto already has, for example, two players in the under-23 category, Lara Perruca and Maria Ferreira, in addition to other athletes in the younger ranks.

Investment also in terms of conditions

One of the factors pointed out by FC Porto officials as differentiating compared to other projects, at the time of launching the senior team, is related to the conditions offered to athletes as a development tool. If in the debut season the club faced greater difficulties in this regard, especially due to the need to fit the team into the Olival Training Center – which often gave way to the Estádio Jorge Sampaio in Pedroso – this season the team is already working full-time in the structure recently renamed after Jorge Costa.

Moreover, besides having counted in the debut season with a technical team and a support staff expanded for the reality of a 3rd Division, in 2025/26, another step forward was taken with the strengthening of these areas, notably in terms of the medical team, physiotherapists, and the accompaniment of a performance department member. On the other hand, the support from the clinical and scouting departments has also been centralized, operating simultaneously with the senior men's and women's squads, except for some professionals exclusively dedicated.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.