Kiwior comes permanently from Arsenal
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FC Porto are Portuguese champions for the 31st time. After the 1-0 home win against FC Alverca, the club from northern Portugal can no longer be displaced by their big rivals Benfica Lisbon two match days before the end of the season. The goal to win against Alverca was scored by Pole Jan Bednarek in the 40th minute. The still unbeaten Benfica only played 2-2 at Famalicão and is nine points behind.
With 38 championship titles, the capital city remains the undisputed record champions, but in terms of the total number of titles won, Porto has now drawn level with 87 trophies, as the sports newspaper “A Bola” calculated. Sporting Lisbon, the third major club in the league, has been champion 21 times and can still win its 58th title by winning the Portuguese Cup this season.
Thanks to an outstanding transfer window and a good choice of coach, Porto was able to win its first championship title since 2022 and increase its squad value by almost a third. After the Dragões were clearly distanced from the Lisbon clubs last season and had two coaches, Vítor Bruno and Martín Anselmi, the Italian Francesco Farioli has made the club competitive again.
“For me, Farioli’s influence was enormous, as shown by the fact that he managed to win the title in his first year at the club with a completely new squad. In other words: FC Porto was successful in a year in which he not only had a new coach, but also a completely new team,” says Gonçalo Tristão Santos, Portugal expert at Transfermarkt. Farioli came from Ajax Amsterdam, where he narrowly missed out on the championship last season. In his 51 games at Porto he scored an average of 2.39 points – only Artur Jorge (2.44) and current president André Villas-Boas (2.62) were better.
TM expert: “Porto doesn’t play the most spectacular football”
Porto’s biggest asset this season is its strong defense. The defense around Portugal’s national goalkeeper Diogo Costa only conceded 15 goals and went 19 times without conceding a goal. In central defense, two new additions, Bednarek and Arsenal loanee Jakub Kiwior, are impressive, and 41-year-old Thiago Silva also strengthened the defense in the winter. However, the Brazilian has to line up behind the two Poles.
“FC Porto doesn’t play the most spectacular football in the world. Of course they play very well, but they are not a particularly attacking team and they often know that there are moments in the game when they have to be more pragmatic than spectacular,” says Santos. “Ultimately they are a results-oriented team, but I don’t say that lightly: it shows intelligence to know when to push forward and when to secure the result. And FC Porto do that very well.”
Update May 5th, 7:35 p.m.: FC Porto announced on Tuesday evening that they had signed defender Kiwior, who had previously been on loan, until 2030. The Portuguese will pay Arsenal FC a transfer fee of 17 million euros for 100 percent of the transfer rights, and a further 5 million euros in bonuses are also possible. In the event of a resale, the Gunners would receive a fixed amount of €2 million. Kiwior’s contract will in future contain an exit clause of 70 million euros. The defender is in the top 10 of the most expensive Porto signings.
FC Porto is difficult to assess offensively, as 20 different professionals have already been successful this season – a league record. The best of them is attacker Samu Aghehowa, who scored 13 goals in 20 games and has been out since mid-February with a torn cruciate ligament. However, Farioli’s team knows how to compensate for this loss. Victor Froholdt (eleven scorers), Gabri Veiga (eleven), right-back Alberto Costa (ten), William Gomes (nine), Oskar Pietuszewski (seven), Borja Sainz (seven) and Pepê (seven) provide goals.
Porto’s new additions are completely convincing
According to Santos, Porto’s success this season is not only due to Farioli, but also to the good transfers. “One of the main factors for this success is related to the club’s performance in the transfer market. Excellent players were signed in the summer and, in addition, very targeted and extremely important signings were made in the winter transfer window. It seems as if every new player contributed something to the team, regardless of whether he was a regular or not. The success rate in signings was excellent and that is the credit of President André Villas-Boas and the entire club management.” A total of €102m was invested in new players, with Froholdt (20m, Copenhagen), Alberto Costa (15m, Juventus), Veiga (15m, Al-Ahli), Sainz (13.3m, Norwich), Pietuszewski (8m, Jagiellonina), Bednarek (7.5m, Southampton) and Kiwior (loan, Arsenal) all making an impact. In return, the club collected 77.8 million euros in income for, among others, Francisco Conceição (32 million, Juve), Otávio (17 million, Paris FC) and João Mário (12 million, Juve).
Porto’s strong season and the good development of the players ensured that the squad value rose from 325 million to 427 million euros – an increase of 31 percent. The biggest winners were Froholdt (+18 million to 30 million), Gomes (+11 to 20), Pietuszewski (+8 to 20), Sainz (+8 to 20) and Veiga (+7 to 25). For Santos, Froholdt, who has also been linked to Eintracht Frankfurt, stands out: “In my opinion, Froholdt was the standout player at FC Porto this season. He was signed by Copenhagen in the summer and immediately secured a place in the starting eleven. He is a very versatile midfielder who can seemingly be found anywhere on the pitch. For me he was the best player in the league and the best signing of the season in the Portuguese league.”
FC Porto drew the right conclusions after a chaotic season last year and is now celebrating its 31st championship. Farioli’s team includes many exciting talents such as Froholdt, Rodrigo Mora and Pietuszewski, who are likely to be the focus of Europe’s top clubs in the summer. The title should also pay off in full on the transfer market.
This article appeared on Transfermarkt in its first version on May 1st. at 9:40 a.m. and was updated after Jakub Kiwior’s permanent signing.
