The Portuguese Cup won this Sunday by Sporting makes Frederico Varandas the president with the most national football trophies at the service of the club, with nine, more than Ribeiro Ferreira, leader between 1946 and 1953.
Elected in 2018, Varandas now has three national championships (2020/21, 2023/24 and 2024/25), three League cups (2018/19, 2020/21 and 2021/22), two Portuguese cups (2018/19 and 2024/25) and a Super Cup (2021).
He is also the first two -time national president at Sporting since Góis Mota completed the first ‘tetra’ of Portuguese football in 1953/54. However, the first of the two champion titles of this leader was won by socks with Ribeiro Ferreira, who died during the previous season.
Therefore, Ribeiro Ferreira was, to this day, the only sportinguist president to ‘bisar’ to ‘solo’ in terms of national titles: he did so in 1946/47 and 1947/48, eventually completing ‘Tri’ the following season, and 1950/51 and 1951/52, starting the ‘tetra’ completed by Góis Mota.
Records and more records
The current leader is also the first maximum leader of the ‘green and whites’ to win three national champion titles since João Rocha, president between 1973 and 1986.
Varandas, moreover, trimmed with the historic leader who names the club’s pavilion, since, to the three national champion titles (1973/74, 1979/80 and 1981/82), Rocha also joined three cups of Portugal (1973/74, 1977/78 and 1981/82) and one Super Cup (1982/83), in a total of seven trophies.
To date, both were exceeded by Ribeiro Ferreira, who added six national champion titles (1946/47, 1947/48, 1948/49, 1950/51, 1951/52 and 1952/53) and two cups of Portugal (1945/46 and 1947/48).
Ribeiro Ferreira, who no longer completed the time of his last achievement, dying in February 1953, was not, however, the first to reach three maximum titles of Portuguese football, but the three championships of Portugal won by Joaquim Oliveira Duarte (1933/34, 1935/37 and 1937/38) are not recognized as national champion titles by the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF).
The Alvalade Club therefore maintains a difference with the FPF and claims 25 titles of national champion, adding the four championships of Portugal won during the validity of this competition, between 1921 and 1938, to the 21 titles recognized by the body that oversees football in Portugal.
Interestingly, Oliveira Duarte, who led the ‘lions’ between 1932 and 1942, is the most titled president in national football competitions, following Ribeiro Ferreira, João Rocha and Frederico Varandas, with five titles, with the particularity of the three championships of Portugal, also added the first title of national champion recognized by the FPF (1940/41) and the first cup of Portugal at the same time.
It was thus the first president of Sporting (and all clubs in Portugal) to reach the ‘double’, a feat that the ‘lions’ have only achieved six occasions, under the leaders of Ribeiro Ferreira (1947/48), Góis Mota (1953/54), João Rocha (1973/74 and 1981/82), Dias da Cunha (2001/02) and now Frederico Varanda (2024/25).
Super Cup is an opportunity to expand numbers
The president of the lions, in August, has further expanding his record of titles when Sporting and Benfica again meet to compete for the Cândido de Oliveira Super Cup.
Varandas became the 44th President of Sporting on September 8, 2018, after the club’s academy attack on Alcochete and did not have an easy start, especially in football, despite the conquest of the Portugal Cup and the 2018/19 League Cup, under the command of Dutch coach Marcel Keizer.
At the time, he was elected with 42.32% of the votes, in the most participated electoral act, with 22,510 voting partners, and reelected, then, in 2022, with 85.8% of the votes, in an election that had a vote of 14,795 members, driven by the winning year, with Ruben Amorim as a coach, who put a long point at the longest ‘fast’ National champion titles of the club, which lasted 19 years.
Amorim, moreover, is ‘umbilically’ linked to six of the eight balconies titles. At the 2020/21 and 2023/24 championships, they also joined two of the current president’s three cups, a Super Cup and even began this time to the team’s’ rum, before heading to Manchester United and surrendered by João Pereira, who would be fired to give Rui Borges.
But at Ruben Amorim’s debut to Sporting team commands, a victory over Sports of Aves (2-0) in March 2020, Varandas faced a demonstration of hundreds of supporters at the José Alvalade Stadium, who demanded their resignation.
The successes achieved by the coach by which Frederico Varandas agreed to pay 10 million euros from the termination clause to ‘rescue’ to Sporting de Braga, however, helped to dispel the black clouds.
Still, the ‘Leonino’ leader was never contested by a ‘bangs’ of adherents, particularly linked to the cheerleaders, with whom he has divergences as long as he ceased unilaterally the protocols in force between the parties from his predecessor, Bruno de Carvalho.
Born in Lisbon in 1979, 45-year-old Varandas became a partner of Sporting by his grandfather’s hand in 1980.
He was clinical director of the ‘lions’ between 2011 and 2018 and, when elected president, broke a ‘lineage’ of managers and lawyers in the club’s presidency in recent decades.
The clinical path also adds the facet of military, having been present in the War of Afghanistan, where he suffered at a distance and accompanied by Sporting Triunfo (2-0) on the FC Porto in the Portuguese Cup final, on May 18, 2008.
Currently, the second term at the head of the Alvalade Club has not yet announced if they will be applied again in next year’s elections, but recent sports successes, particularly in football, let an anticipation without relevant opposition.
