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 João Noronha Lopes’ answers.
The priority of priorities, once elected is…
There are several priorities. Benfica has no time to waste. There were 4 years of setbacks in many essential areas of the club’s life. I will immediately meet with Benfica employees, from the stadium to Seixal, introduce myself and my team, and meet the people with whom I will build the future of our club. Change cannot be achieved with one-man presidencies. Strong leadership begins with the ability to inspire and value everyone around us. This is where I intend to start.
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.
Benfica’s current situation is rooted in a lack of identity and the absence of a winning culture. Priorities have long been reversed. Benfica must form to win and not to sell. This will imply an unprecedented investment in our young people, so that they can fulfill their childhood dream, which is also the dream of their fans: to be champions at Benfica and shine in Europe at the service of their club. On the other hand, we must hire to reinforce, not to transform Benfica into a carousel of players like the one we have seen in recent years, with successive signings and departures that made it impossible to build a winning base. For all this to happen, we have to be more careful and intelligent in the way we approach the market. Identify talent earlier, ensuring smarter acquisitions that add sporting and financial value to the club. The balance between training as a fundamental axis and talent from outside results when the football structure knows what it wants and how to get there. But it is necessary to address these two dimensions in a consistent way, not changing the strategy depending on the wind or electoral calendars. What we have seen in the last 4 years is not a sporting project, but sporting mismanagement.
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?
It is important not to confuse partners with distracting maneuvers. A year of positive results does not change the trajectory of sharp worsening of financial imbalances at Benfica. Liabilities increased by 95M euros during Rui Costa’s mandate. The external supplies and services item was 55M euros at the beginning of the mandate and today represents a cost of 90M euros. The football squad has depreciated and is now worth 100M euros less than that of last season’s first-place team, despite the investment made by Benfica being much higher. Operating costs increased by 83% during these 4 years. The list goes on. All structural indicators of Benfica’s finances point in the same direction: a degradation of the club’s financial sustainability and the absence of a strategy that immediately recognizes the existence of serious problems. Only a serious and realistic diagnosis can find the solutions that the club needs at this moment. This is what my financial team and I have been working on for around a year, with the aim of tackling this problem from the outset and ensuring that Benfica reverses the trajectory of the last 4 years.
Does José Mourinho fit into your sporting project for football? Why?
José Mourinho is Benfica’s coach and it will be with him that I will work on October 26th. He is a coach who knows how to win and knows that Benfica has the same ambition. What I will do as soon as I become president is to present to José Mourinho my sporting project for football and the team that I am taking with me to implement that project.
What will Benfica look like in the future? (A reformist measure until 2030)
He talks about expanding the stadium and redeveloping the surrounding area. A project carried out with ambition, seriousness and competence, always involving partners first. What this management did with the presentation of the Benfica district It is yet another example of the disrespect for members and the frivolous way in which fundamental issues in the club’s life have been addressed over the last 4 years. The Benfica of the future will certainly be a more competent Benfica and capable of learning from mistakes. Only then can we do things differently and guarantee the future that all Benfica fans legitimately aspire to.