Sporting CP’s talent conveyor belt alive and kicking | OneFootball

Salvador Blopa and Geovany Quenda are front-page news in today’s edition of Portuguese sports paper O Jogo

For decades Sporting Clube de Portugal’s ability to produce some of the best talents in the world, let alone in the country, was the sole source of pride for the Lisbon giants, given the team’s chronic lack of competitiveness.

Two league triumphs in 38 years tells its own story. That changed upon the appointment of a coaching genius named Ruben Amorim. Under the current Manchester United manager, Sporting usurped Porto and Benfica to become Portugal’s best team.

Throughout the lean years, Sporting fans would take solace by pointing at their remarkable Alcochete Academy. The Lisbon outfit are one of only two clubs in world football to have produced two Ballon d’Or winners, Luís Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo. At Euro 2016 when Portugal won their maiden major trophy, 10 of the 14 players used in the final against France had come through Sporting’s youth ranks.

Last night, fans at a rainy José Alvalade stadium were treated to another demonstration of the academy’s rude health.

Against FC Alverca in the quarter-finals of the Portuguese League Cup, coach Rui Borges gave no fewer than six youth players their debuts. One of them, Salvador Blopa, scored a fine brace as the hosts ran out 5-1 winners. Eighteen-year-old Blopa was their first youth player to scored two goals on his debut for the senior team since club legend Fernando Peyroteo way back in 1938.

Two of the other goals were scored by fellow academy graduate Geovany Quenda, also 18, one of Portugal’s hottest prospects who has already been sold to Chelsea for €50 million and is playing his final season on loan before switching from the Portuguese capital to London.

These are heady times for Sporting fans. The current two-time champions (three league triumphs in the last five years) appear to have cracked the code enabling them to combine the construction of a winning team with the continued integration of the youth talents coming out of Alcochete.