Benfica goes to the vote on October 25th. DN challenged the six candidates for the club’s presidency for the four-year period 2025-2029, Rui Costa, Luís Filipe Vieira, João Noronha Lopes, João Diogo Manteigas, Martim Mayer and Cristóvão Carvalho, to answer the same five questions on five essential topics in the life of the club, from the priority after the election, to politics and the sports project for football, passing through the liabilities and future of the Benfica institution. Here are Luís Filipe Vieira’s answers.
The priority of priorities, once elected is…
Without a doubt, we have to look at the accounts and define a short and medium term plan that allows us to guarantee financial sustainability, without mortgaging the sporting component. Then, ensure, from the beginning, that I surround myself with the right people to correct what needs urgent adjustments at Benfica. Seixal, for example, faces a shortage of professionals and needs restructuring as soon as possible. We run the risk of compromising the future of the club.
How is the balance found between training and the sporting demands of a club like Benfica: Training to sell and sustain the sporting project or training to feed the team and have sporting success.
As I have always done throughout my time as president. Benfica is a club that produces countless talents every year, talents that should serve to, initially, enrich the main team. After making their contribution at home, it is natural that they generate interest abroad, and at that point it is necessary to evaluate the proposals and reconcile this with our will and the will of the player himself. Unfortunately, training in recent years has been neglected by the current management. We urgently need to reverse this!
Benfica presented a positive result of €34.4 ME. Liabilities fell to €474.9 million – is this still a problem? And how do you lower it further?
This is one of Benfica’s most serious problems currently and one of the reasons why I applied. When I left the presidency, SAD’s liabilities stood at 379 million euros. Today, after four years of Rui Costa’s presidency, it stands at 478 million euros, that is, 100 million euros more than in 2021. We are talking about the biggest liability in the history of SAD. It is true that in 2024/25 Benfica presented a positive result of 34.4 million euros, but in a healthy club and with last year’s extraordinary revenues, Benfica should have presented a positive result close to 70 million. We also cannot erase the negative results of 2021/22 (-€35M) and 2023/24 (-€31.3M). During Rui Costa’s entire term, Benfica posted an accumulated loss of around 28 million euros. This financial disaster could have as its counterpart the winning of titles or an increase in Benfica’s assets, but none of that happens. On the contrary, the club lost sporting competitiveness, did not increase its assets and saw costs soar. Instead of reinforcing Benfica’s solidity, the future was mortgaged with ever-increasing debts and directionless management.
Does José Mourinho fit into your sporting project for football? Why?
Benfica’s coach needs to share the ambition of elevating the club to a level of reference in Europe. At the moment, that coach is José Mourinho, and I hope he stays in office, this will mean that the results correspond to what is desired by all of us.
What will Benfica look like in the future? (A reformist measure until 2030)
The main and most reformist of all: changing direction to regain leadership and direction! Then, invest in improving the conditions of Estádio da Luz, work to have more seats, increase the stadium’s capacity to 90 thousand. I want a winning Benfica with the right accounts, financially healthy, with a Benfica Campus with better conditions, more employees and even more talent and which, in addition, will also have a hotel and a school, as foreseen in our program. Finally, a Benfica with sports that beat everything there is to win in Portugal and that are capable of making Portugal proud abroad and also a club that will have many more members than those it has today. This is how I see Benfica with me as president.
isaura.almeida@dn.pt