Porto had not won the Portuguese title since 2022, and this year it had to face Mourinho’s Benfica – still unbeaten in Primeira Liga matches – and a Sporting Lisbon team capable of winning the last two championships and reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League. These facts alone would be enough to weigh the success achieved by the team coached by Francesco Farioli, but there are other interesting data: for example, the 85 points and only 15 goals conceded in 32 matches, or the first place held since the first round of Primeira Liga, or the 18 victories in the first 19 league games. The start was so dazzling that the fans at the Do Dragão began to sing a chant dedicated to the Italian coach as early as the beginning of September, and then there was also the contract renewal until 2028. Considering the psychodrama experienced at Ajax a year ago, when the team led by Farioli managed not to win the title despite having a nine-point lead with five games to go, the triumph in Primeira Liga takes on enormous value for the Italian coach.
In reality, the rhetoric of revenge and of bringing everything home with a year of delay is at best misleading. Because, as anyone who knows football understands, the title lost last year by Farioli’s Ajax should be considered a system glitch. In fact, the results of Ajax 2025/26 – currently the Amsterdam team is fourth in Eredivisie and trails the leader PSV by 23 points – demonstrate that the Italian coach had done a great job even in the Netherlands. It’s just that he had not managed to complete it, to close the circle. The circle closed in Porto, where the former coach of Nice – and Alanyaspor, and Fatih Karagumruk – found the perfect context to (make) express his football: a solid team at the back and technical up front, which, thanks to these characteristics, was able to practice a patient and sophisticated game, characterized by compact defense, established connections, and a continuous search for positional superiority.
Behind Farioli’s ideas is a work that has been ongoing for years, refined in clubs and contexts very different from each other. And which, in fact, has allowed him to grow step by step with each experience, within a path that seems taken from your most exotic career on Football Manager. This too, especially this, if you think about it, is a beautiful story: Farioli, in fact, was the first Italian coach in the history of Ajax and then also of Porto (in reality, Puricelli and Delneri also coached the dragons’ club, but the former was born in Uruguay and the latter was dismissed before debuting in official matches). Two historic realities of European football, two teams that by DNA and vocation almost have the obligation to propose a certain type of football – sought after, spectacular, in any case not defensive. Now he also has his first title in the trophy cabinet, so he has shown that an Italian coach with atypical ideas – at least as perceived by Italian coaches outside of Italy – can not only exist, but can also be called by certain teams. And in the end, he can also win.
To complete the picture of the revolution, there is the historical precedent: before Farioli succeeded, the last – and only – Italian coach able to win the Primeira Liga was Giovanni Trapattoni (Portuguese champion with Benfica in 2005). Maybe it has nothing to do with it, or maybe it does, but this new title has a completely different flavor: Farioli is still very young (he turned 37 less than a month ago) and therefore cannot be a totem of world football like Trap was, he has shown courage and ambition, he is not an ideologized coach – his Porto plays differently compared to his Nice or Ajax – and yet his teams have a clear, recognizable identity. An identity that best values the talent of individuals. At Porto, Alberto Costa, Froholdt, Samu, Nehuén Pérez, the 17-year-old Pietuszewski, the revived Gabri Veigahave benefited from this: all players under 25 who have been protagonists of a great season and can still grow a lot. This is also a great merit to attribute to Francesco Farioli, perhaps even greater than a Primeira Liga title. A title that, as we have seen, was by no means taken for granted. And yet it has arrived.