José Tavares leads FC Porto's new side as they make history again | OneFootball

The 2025/26 season was, as André Villas-Boas described it, the “year of the Dragon”. After being crowned national senior champions, FC Porto repeated the feat at under-19, under-17 and under-15 level, completing a clean sweep not seen in Portugal since 1997/98. At the same time, the Dragons ended a long trophy drought in the youth ranks that had lasted seven years — the last title had come in 2018/19 — once again asserting themselves with authority on the national stage. It was a paradigm shift that began as soon as AVB took over the presidency, with a deep restructuring of the youth setup. José Tavares returned to Olival to serve as director — Filipe Ribeiro is the technical coordinator — and both vice-president Tiago Madureira and executive director Henrique Monteiro took on a prominent role in Porto’s talent recruitment and development machine.

The link between professional football and the youth system was strengthened, with more consistent coordination between the various squads — it is not unusual to see youngsters playing in the age group immediately above their own. In terms of coaching staffs, the appointments of Sérgio Ferreira, José João and Manuel Prata reflected a commitment to young, ambitious and highly competent coaches from a methodological point of view. And of course João Brandão, who led the B team to its best-ever finish in Liga 2 in his second season in charge. There was also room to improve infrastructure and logistics, while the Jorge Costa CTFD is not used exclusively by the youth teams.

The result? Beyond the titles, greater independence and a stronger ability to retain the talents developed at the club. Beyond the players already in the final stages of their development with the B team, which posted its youngest average age ever, movement between age groups allowed rough diamonds such as André Miranda, Tiago Silva, Bernardo Lima, Duarte Cunha, Yoan Pereira, Mateus Mide and Eduardo Ferreira to immediately gain a place at professional level at just 17 and 18 years of age. The first three, in fact, even made their debuts for the first team.

Other potential stars are already coming through the pipeline. In the under-17s, Tcherno Jamanca stood out for his goalscoring instinct, as did Gustavo Guerra and João Brito, who have already featured for the B team. Among the newly crowned under-15 champions, the spotlight falls on striker Tiago Portugal, winger Paulo Leite and midfielder Rodrigo Seca. The expectation is that the club’s goldmine will not run dry anytime soon, especially since more promising talents are waiting in the wings and FC Porto does not want to leave anything to chance. That is why there is a clear focus on individual development and monitoring plans, carried out in coordination with several areas — the individual technique development department, performance, analysis and psychology.

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