This is an updated version of an article first published in January.
Rui Borges was coaching in amateur football seven years ago, but 2026 has seen him continue to defy the odds to make history with Sporting CP.
This week’s Champions League quarter-final will be the Portuguese side’s first since the competition’s rebrand from the European Cup in 1992, and their place has been earned in dramatic fashion.
Two last-minute winners in the final two league phase matches had Borges sprinting down the touchline in a Jose Mourinho-style celebration. The first came against last year’s champions, Paris Saint-Germain, before a 94th-minute winner away to Athletic Club secured their place in this season’s top eight.
Drama found Sporting again, even with that automatic qualification for the round of 16. A trip to the Arctic Circle saw them 3-0 down after their first leg against Bodo/Glimt, but they hit back with a 5-0 win in the second leg just a week later to secure a meeting with Arsenal.
Borges’ Sporting beats Luis Enrique’s PSG in January (Gualter Fatia/Getty Images)
A moment of truth came after that thrashing in Norway. Bodo/Glimt had harnessed the momentum from eliminating Inter into an unstoppable energy that put Sporting on the back foot, and ended in only the second game this season that Borges’ side have failed to score.
Borges’ response was to give his players two days off to clear their minds, enjoy their free time, and recover both physically and mentally. Mistakes from the first leg were identified, but a shock therapy-style debrief was avoided. Instead, emphasis was put on what had brought Sporting to that stage, as well as enforcing the message that the comeback was not just possible, but would actually happen.
Focus turned to being more imposing from the first minute of the second leg, and their first big chance of the 5-0 win came within three minutes of kick-off.
As Borges reflects on the chaotic past few months, the 44-year-old could be forgiven if his visit to memory lane goes further back ahead of this landmark fixture.
After all, he would only need to look down at his wrist to picture the past.
There, he won’t lay eyes on a Rolex or a Cartier watch, but one made by Casio. It 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 he 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 south-coast capital, there were benefits of 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 of Borges, who came through the club’s academy and 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.”
So how does Borges get that buy-in?
Jorge Fernandes, who played under him 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)
And Borges has also learnt quickly. 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 to secured an 11th-place finish.
Those quick adjustments have become a theme of Borges’ managerial career that were 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 join 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.
Against the French side, 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 during 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 the last campaign (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 — following stints at Académica, National and Vilafranquense after leaving Academico Viseu — 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, after surpassing Sporting’s best finish in a Champions League campaign (the round of 16), Borges and his coaching staff will have their eyes on creating more history in Lisbon and London.
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.
Sporting are no strangers to hosting Arsenal, having done so in the Europa League three years ago, but this stage is different.
For those involved, like Borges, it could also be a platform. This is arguably the biggest match of his managerial career, but a quick glance at that Casio watch will be sure to keep his mind on the task at hand.
