Nuno Azevedo e Cardoso on success in football: “Have a plan, stick with it, and choose the right investors”

Eleanor Sa-Carneiro

The recent president of Portuguese football club Vianense, Nuno Azevedo e Cardoso, considers having a plan, sticking with it, and the “right investors” are key to the success of a football team.

Nuno’s national rise to fame occurred when he brought investors and his own energy to a fourth league football club in the north of Portugal called Vianense. In just 11 months, under his presidency the club rose to the top of the third league, proof that with the right ingredients, anything is possible. “When you have a plan and you stick with it and choose the right people and you have the right investors”, you can make dreams come true, Nuno told The Qonversation.

When asked what constitutes a good investor, Nuno spoke of there being two types of the current trend of multi-club owners, “the sustainable ones that that everybody knows; the city group, Red Bull, the Qataris” which he claims “do everything right” in that they too have a plan that they stick with. “They have time” to play the long game, “in a sustainable way” he explains.

While Nuno concedes that this type of investor may not reap immediate rewards or results, “they are here to stay”. The other category of investors, typically smaller investors looking for a fast buck, tend to come and go, generating instability. “When they go, it’s worse than when they come in”, Nuno laments, citing some clubs’ need for a capital injection leads them to overlook due diligence on the investors and they “accept the money”, only to regret it further down the line.

Watch this exciting episode of The Qonversation hosted by Eleanor Sá-Carneiro.