José Tavares leads FC Porto's new side, making history again | OneFootball

The 2025/26 season was, as André Villas-Boas called 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 brought an end to a long trophy drought in youth development, which had stretched on for seven years – the last title had come in 2018/19 – reasserting 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 manager Henrique Monteiro took on a prominent role in the club’s talent identification and development machinery.

The link between professional football and youth development was strengthened, with more consistent coordination between the various squads – it is not unusual to see youngsters playing in the age group immediately above. 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 standpoint. And of course João Brandão, who led the B team to its best-ever record in Liga 2 at the end of 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 fielded its youngest average age ever, the 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 earn space 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. 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 there are more prospects waiting in the wings and FC Porto does not want to leave anything to chance. That is why there is a clear commitment to individual development and monitoring plans, worked on 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.