Inside Sporting's shocking post-Ruben Amorim slide: Manchester United manager's successor sacked inside six weeks and Champions League elimination all-but confirmed

Amorim was a beloved figure at the Jose Alvalade, which is no mean feat given he'd spent the majority of his playing days representing Sporting's hated city rivals Benfica.

His appointment as coach in March 2020 was also met with serious scepticism among the supporters because he was so young and so experienced. Amorim was just 35 at the time and had only previously worked at third-tier Casa Pier, where he stood down after being suspended over lacking the required coaching credentials, and Braga, first with the club's reserves and then the senior squad.

So, Sporting's decision to pay €10 million ($12m) to secure his services - which made him the third-most expensive coach in the world - astounded many within the Portuguese game, particularly as the Lisbon outfit had become synonymous with wastefulness. Amorim looked like another expensive Sporting mistake. In reality, it was a game-changing masterstroke.

In his first full season at Sporting, Amorim ended the club's 19-year Liga drought. They reclaimed the title last year and, when he left for United, the Lions were rampaging towards a third, having won their first 11 games of the 2024-25 season.

Perhaps even more impressively, Sporting had also claimed 10 points from four matches in the Champions League, including a stunning 4-1 demolition of Manchester City that arrived just after he'd confirmed his intention to take over at Old Trafford.

"It was written it had to be like this," an ecstatic Amorim said after bidding an emotional farewell to the Alvalade with a statement win over Pep Guardiola that also generated a huge amount of excitement in Manchester. It was a bittersweet night for Sporting supporters, though, as they were understandably devastated by the timing of Amorim's exit.

Sporting president Frederico Varandas was just as disappointed by losing Amorim with a season already under way. As he was at pains to point out, the plan had always been for Amorim to leave at the end of the 2024-25 campaign, but he felt he was left with no option but to negotiate a premature departure after United made it clear that they would be willing to pay the coach's release clause.

"At the end of last season, Ruben Amorim, one of the best coaches in the history of Sporting, informed us that it would be time to end the cycle [in 2025]," Varandas explained at an awards ceremony in December. "He wanted to end with a second successive championship. It would be three championships in five years... Our coach would then accept a new project. Sporting would make a change. We would start a new cycle: end the season, two or three players leave, five or six come in, a new coach comes in and starts a new process, even with growing pains.

"We prepared the group for this and so we started the season, as we ended the previous one, with a well-oiled machine. Then, a big European club arrived and our coach accepted. From that point on, everything that was planned changed.

"So, Sporting did not choose the timing of the end of this cycle. The truth is that in November our coach left Sporting, what happened to Sporting has never happened in Portugal. It is the first time that a coach has left, due to success, in the middle of a season. Many coaches have left for higher leagues and projects, but a club has never lost a coach in the middle of the season."

Losing Amorim at such a delicate moment put Sporting in a very awkward position, as Varandas suddenly had to find a worthy replacement at relatively short notice, a top tactician that was not only available but also willing to take over a team that had seven games in 26 days coming up, meaning the incoming coach would haven't much time to impose his own footballing philosophy on the team.

For that reason, and the lack of strong external candidates, Varandas decided to look in-house and, on November 11, Sporting promoted reserve team coach Joao Pereira to the first team boss. Unlike Amorim's appointment, it proved a disastrous decision.

Sporting won 6-0 in Pereira's first game in charge, a Taca de Portugal clash with fourth-tier outfit Amarante, but it quickly became clear that he was not the right man for the job.

Three weeks after hammering City in the Champions League, Sporting were taken apart in a 5-1 loss at home to Arsenal. Further disappointment followed four days later, as they lost their unbeaten Liga record, defeated 1-0 at the Alvalade by Santa Clara. They lost again the following week, this time to Moreirense, meaning all of a sudden a successful title defence was in serious doubt.

Perhaps even more gallingly, Sporting's Champions League campaign began to completely unravel. Thanks to Amorim, the Lions had been in a position to progress directly to the last 16 of the Champions League - which obviously would have been a huge boost for the club's coffers. In the end, though, Sporting only scraped into the play-off with a horribly unimpressive 1-1 draw at home to an already-eliminated Bologna, after blowing their hopes of a top-eight finish with losses to Club Brugge and RB Leipzig.

By that point, Pereira was already long gone, with his dismissal having been made official just before midnight on Christmas Day. He had lasted just six weeks at the helm and oversaw just eight matches. Pereira had only won three of them, though, and the poor run of results contributed to Benfica usurping Sporting at the top of the Liga table.

Varandas felt compelled to act, but accepted his share of the responsibility for Pereira's sacking, admitting that the job had essentially come too soon for the former Under-23s boss.

"We knew it would be difficult to replace the coach with the second-most titles in Sporting's history," the president said. "Between pros and cons, we brought forward the decision to appoint Joao Pereira. The club didn’t want it to be this moment, Joao Pereira didn’t want it to be this moment, and I will carry this offer for the rest of my life, as the most ungrateful offer and the most poisoned chalice for a coach."

Encouragingly for Sporting, Pereira's successor, Rui Borges, had no qualms about accepting the offer to take over midway through a season. "The time is right for me," Borges said at his official unveiling. "It's always right. I'm very positive, I believe things happen when they have to. It's an opportunity we've all worked for. I'm the leader of the Portuguese champions and I couldn't be happier. I look at the squad and it's the best."

That remains to be seen, of course, but Borges has at least put Sporting back on top of the league. However, their lead has been cut to just two points by Benfica after back-to-back draws, with Porto and Arouca. Sporting are also facing almost certain elimination from the Champions League after losing 3-0 at home in the first leg of their knockout phase play-off with Dortmund.

Given Borges has yet to win a Champions League game since taking over (two defeats and a draw), it would be a colossal surprise if Sporting managed to even go close to turning the tie around at Signal Iduna Park. Of course, going out of Europe may well aid their bid to retain their national title, but there remains the very real risk that Sporting will end up regretting Amorim's mid-season move to Manchester United just as much as the man himself.