It’s the penultimate league phase game of the Champions League and you’re facing the reigning champions, Paris Saint-Germain.
You have taken a 1-0 lead, but Khvicha Kvaratskhelia hits a lethal finish into the top corner. Hope is not lost, however. As the clock hits 90 minutes, Luis Suarez (not that one) heads in the winner and now you’re sprinting down the touchline.
That was how last Tuesday went for Sporting CP head coach Rui Borges, who was coaching in amateur football just seven years ago.
The 44-year-old beat 2025’s FIFA Manager of the Year, Luis Enrique, to earn his side a chance of finishing in the top eight of this season’s Champions League — an achievement that would confirm a place in the round of 16.
Borges’ Sporting beat Luis Enrique’s PSG earlier this month (Gualter Fatia/Getty Images)
Sporting are 10th going into the final round of matches, level with seven other clubs on 13 points. Even if it is a short trip into Spain to face Athletic Club for a chance to match their best-ever Champions League finish, Borges could be forgiven if he visits memory lane on the journey.
After all, he would only need to look down at his wrist to do so.
There, he won’t lay eyes on a Rolex or a Cartier watch, but one made by Casio. It is a watch that cost him less than €20 when he first started coaching amateur football at his hometown club with whom he retired as a player, SC Mirandela, and still wears today as a reminder of where he came from: a small city in the north of Portugal with a population just over half of Sporting CP’s 51,400 attendance for their win over PSG (21,000).
While Borges is taking on Europe’s elite in his country’s capital, there were benefits to hailing from such a small pocket of Portugal.
“I’ve followed him since he was 10 years old,” Mirandela’s sporting director, Valdemar, tells The Athletic.
Part of Mirandela’s academy for another 10 years, Borges had three spells at the club before retiring as a player.
By that point, Valdemar, who has been sporting director since 2014 but held various roles before that, had more than enough faith to give a 36-year-old Borges his first taste of management.
“I watched him grow up,” he adds. “He knew exactly what he wanted. Very determined and with a huge desire to win.
“Back then, he was already a true leader. He had a natural gift for training and leading. He was very intelligent, studied opponents carefully but also paid attention to what the best teams were doing. Then he managed to bring players together, get them on his side, have them running for him.”
It is easy to say a manager can get players onside, ready to run through brick walls for him, but how does Borges get that buy-in?
Jorge Fernandes, who played under Borges at Primeira Liga side Vitoria last season, says: “There were times when the coach didn’t play me, but during those moments, he kept the same attitude and respect toward me. He was always honest and direct, which is a special memory because that doesn’t always happen.
“Then, when I dislocated my shoulder, he praised me in a press conference and that really meant a lot. He said I was ‘a horse’ to praise my work ethic and at that moment I felt honoured. The coach matches words with actions. He has great character.”
Fernandes is not the only player to be given that moniker. Arsenal’s Declan Rice was given the same nickname by his team-mates for the amount of running he does.
Jorge Fernandes played under Borges at Vitoria last season (Pedro Loureiro/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
Now able to master the art of the press conference, Borges has learnt quickly to get to where he is today.
He impressed in his first year with Mirandela, guiding them to their best-ever finish of fourth in the 2017-18 campaign, and was then sought out by second division club Academico Viseu. With the side second from bottom when Borges took charge, a switch from his predecessor’s back three to more attacking 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 systems inspired a turnaround that yielded seven wins from 14 games and secured an 11th-place finish.
Those quick adjustments have become a theme of Borges’ managerial career that became recognised nationally when he replaced Ruben Amorim as Sporting’s head coach.
As Premier League watchers now know, Amorim was wedded to his 3-4-3 system, but in Borges’ first game in charge (a 1-0 win over Benfica), he set up with a back four.
There have been periods when Borges has used a back three, when the side were ravaged by injuries as they went on to win the league last season, but his preferences have shone through.
Amorim left Sporting to take over at Manchester United in 2024 (PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP via Getty Images)
“He has always been a coach who favoured a 4-2-3-1 with some variations,” Valdemar says.
“He has a great ability to adapt,” Fernandes adds. “At Vitoria, we played at times with three centre-backs and at others in a back four. He is always evolving and bringing new ways of thinking.”
The climax of this Champions League run is likely the best example of that adaptability.
Borges used a 4-2-3-1 in each of Sporting’s first five league phase matches this season, but reverted to systems with three centre-backs in their last two matches against Bayern Munich and PSG with injuries to captain Morten Hjulmand, Geovany Quenda (who is set to join Chelsea in the summer), the highly-rated Ousmane Diomande and Belgium international Zeno Debast.
In response, against PSG, Borges repurposed full-backs Ivan Fresneda and Matheus Reis as wide centre-backs, while dropping one winger (Geny Catamo) back to defend. The use of Trincao almost exclusively as a No 10 this season, rather than a winger in a 3-4-3, also proved beneficial as his shot that led to Suarez’s winner came from a central area.
The 26-year-old is just one Sporting player who has flourished even more since Borges took over just over a year ago, though.
Fresneda, who was linked with Arsenal in 2023, was going to be sold by Amorim. After a year of consistent performances, he received his first national call-up from Spain in over two years to join their under-21s in November’s international break.
Quenda was used mostly as a wing-back under Amorim, and while he has been injured since mid-December, he has already made more goal contributions in all competitions (13) this season than he did in the entirety of last season (11).
(Bruno de Carvalho/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Quick and constant improvement is nothing new to Borges and his coaching staff, who have all been with him since Mirandela in 2017 bar Tiago Aguiar, who joined the crew in 2023.
Seven wins from 15 games in charge of Mafra helped guide them to sixth in the second division in 2023, which stands as their best-ever finish.
That summer is when the big leagues came calling, and Moreirense SC were the club to give Borges his first top-flight job. There, the former amateur coach led yet another club to history, as they ended the 2023-24 season with their highest-ever points tally (55) while finishing sixth.
Valdemar describes the subsequent move to Vitoria in the summer of 2024 as “crucial” for Borges.
To climb the ladder that quickly, with the same support group, is not normal but the ambition to rise has always been evident.
Pedro Amador, who played under Borges at Moreirense, says: “Even in conversations with the coaching staff, we used to say, ‘What will be the next step after this great season?’ I knew they were going to take a step up. I knew they were going to grow.”
Now, all Borges and his coaching staff’s focus will be on qualifying in the top eight of the Champions League. Should they achieve that, they will once again be reaching the heights of their club’s achievements, as the furthest Sporting have reached in the Champions League is the round of 16.
Their work is not going unnoticed. Borges is being watched by Premier League and La Liga clubs, but is under contract with Sporting until 2027 with a €20million release clause.
This week’s trip to Spain to face Athletic will be fitting, as that is where his inspiration for attacking football was born.
With the match kicking off at 9pm local time, he will be hoping for a pleasant glance back down to his wrist when the action is over around 11pm.
Or maybe another sprint down the touchline.
