'Planet's best youngster' to Man City's 'magic' man - the rise of Viana

As they left the meeting and stepped into the lift, Hugo Viana couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"Ten million euros is a lot of money - are you sure about that?" he asked Sporting president Frederico Varandas.

It was March 2020, and Sporting director of football Viana was referring to untested manager Ruben Amorim's Braga buyout clause.

Varandas had no doubts whatsoever. And neither did Viana, who will replace Txiki Begiristain as Manchester City's director of football next season.

Viana thought it was his job to raise the question though, considering Amorim's lack of managerial experience in senior football. The decision, however, was already made.

"The only person from the club who was aligned with me was Viana," Varandas would later admit.

Viana, in fact, was the mastermind behind the idea, having thought about bringing Amorim to Sporting months before, but initially to their B side.

Ultimately, it proved to be a career-defining move that has drastically changed the fortunes of a team that had been constantly at war with itself and gone almost two decades without a league title.

They have since won it twice, developed an outstanding scouting network and finished three consecutive financial years with a profit for the first time ever, reporting a record revenue of 246.7m euros in the last term, largely thanks to the sales of players like Manuel Ugarte and Pedro Porro.

That all helps explain why Manchester City have decided to make Viana the successor to Begiristain, who will leave the four-times-in-a-row English champions at the end of the season.

It may have come as a surprise to some, but definitely not to anyone at Sporting.

"Viana has proved, over and over, that he can do magic," Amorim said.

"We have to remember that we fight against clubs that are stronger than us financially, so we have to put much more effort, we have to present our project and show our track record in the transfer market."

And, for most of the time, Viana has done that in silence, having been described in Portugal as 'the shadow man'.

Despite a career that took him to two World Cups and saw him labelled as "the best young player in the planet" on his arrival at Newcastle in 2002, the 41-year-old doesn't enjoy the spotlight anymore.

"That's something that should be stressed because he's well aware that it's more important in his position to do his work behind the scenes than to be in pictures everywhere," coach Domingos Paciencia, who first had him as a player at Braga and then later on as sporting director at Belenenses, told BBC Sport.

"That certainly won't change at City."

Having grown up in Barcelos, in the north of Portugal, Viana spent most of his childhood in his hometown side Gil Vicente's stadium. It was right next to his grandparents' home, so he would often be found there watching them train.

A few years on, he would join their youth teams himself and then, at 14, pack his things for a move to Sporting's academy.

He embarked on a meteoric rise that saw him win the Portuguese title at 18, before being called up for his first World Cup and moving to Newcastle at the age of 19.

Although things didn't work out quite as expected for the elegant midfielder in the Premier League, he met one of his mentors at St James' Park.

"Perhaps, it was a hasty decision to go to Newcastle at the time. I had just returned from the World Cup and ended up getting carried away.

"We usually say we wouldn't do anything different in our lives, but I would do, knowing what I know today. Nowadays, if one of my children tell me they'll leave for England at 19, I won't let them do it," Viana said in a rare interview with the Expresso podcast in May.

"But I was lucky to meet arguably the best person I've met in football there, Sir Bobby Robson. I'm still in touch with his sons to this day - they watched the derby against Benfica at Alvalade with my family. They are all spectacular people."

After a career that failed to live up to the initial hype, Viana retired at 33 and promised his wife he would not work in football anymore.

But when Belenenses came calling a year later, in 2017, he was unable to resist.

Although it was his first experience as sporting director, he made his style clear right away.

"The way he left Belenenses says a lot about his character," Paciencia recalled.

"He had gone to watch a player with the club president and then, before he could realise, he found the president already talking with the player in the dressing room.

"That was supposed to be his job and he couldn't accept it. He felt the president was overstepping his role and not respecting his space, so he resigned."

It didn't take long for Viana to be back in football, this time as an international relations director after being appointed by Sporting, based like Belenenses in Lisbon, in 2018.

A few months later he was named sporting director and, despite requiring a bit of time to adjust, with four different coaches and failed signings like Yannick Bolasie and Jesse Rodriguez, he eventually found his feet.

"He has grown significantly because he found the right context to do that as a professional and simultaneously help improve the structure," Leonel Pontes, who worked as Sporting coach in 2019 and is now a technical director at Shanghai Shenhua, said.

"Between the seasons 2018-19 and 2019-20, the squad building was called into question, with unbalanced teams, which led to successive managerial changes.

"It doesn't seem normal to me to have four different coaches in a single season, but in the end the decision to bring Amorim has proved very successful."

It has been a turning point for Sporting in their recent history and also for Viana, of course.

Under Amorim, Sporting have won trophies again and finally found peace.

It's no surprise they have been producing so many players.

While the likes of Joao Palhinha, Matheus Nunes, Nuno Mendes, Porro and Ugarte have been sold for high sums, others like Goncalo Inacio, Ousmane Diomande, Morten Hjulmand, Geovany Quenda and Viktor Gyokeres have stepped up and filled their shoes.

That's been the result of the Amorim-Viana partnership.

They are long-time friends, having played together for Portugal and also for Braga.

But their bond grew especially strong when they were both approaching the end of their careers in the Middle East.

They would often meet in Dubai as Amorim was struggling to cope with injuries and had in Viana a shoulder to lean on.

"It's great [to have one of my best friends working for me] but, at the same time, difficult," Viana said.

"But we respect each other a lot, whatever we have to say, we say, whatever we have to discuss, we discuss. It's been a nice challenge and positive for both of us.

"What we are all living at Sporting I was never able to live as a footballer. We sometimes look around us and don't see what we do as work but like a pleasant thing."

With Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola out of contract this summer, and his future uncertain, many in Portugal will be keeping a close eye on the prospect of Amorim and Viana reuniting a lot sooner than expected.