Part II — Understanding the world around him

05 | FROM WORKSHOP TO FOOTBALL CLUB

There is something appealing about a workshop. It is not quite a factory, where the finished product matters more than the people who make it, nor is it a museum, where the work has already been completed and the only responsibility left is to preserve it. A workshop is somewhere in between: a place where knowledge is passed on, ideas are tested, mistakes are made and corrected, and people with different skills come together to make something that none of them could have produced alone.

I think this is what attracts Santi Bentancur to the idea of el taller. He has spent years studying football as a game of systems, decisions and individual development, but a football club is not a collection of players waiting to be improved by a clever coach. It is a collection of people, with their own experience and understanding, working towards something they must eventually learn to recognise as their own.

Óscar Tabárez understood the importance of building the conditions in which that work could happen. When he returned to lead Uruguay in 2006, his project was not simply to improve the senior national team; it was to establish a process through which the different national age groups could share an identity and a common approach to development. The Proceso connected the under-15s, under-17s, under-20s and senior side, treating the development of a footballer as something that extended beyond his next match. Players were encouraged to study, to understand their country’s football history and to develop the technical, ethical and disciplinary qualities expected of them. Coaches were part of that process, too: educators who had responsibilities beyond the touchline.

Santi admires the ambition of that undertaking. He does not imagine that Atlético can simply reproduce it, nor does he yet know what its equivalent might look like at a club operating in Portugal’s lower divisions. But the principle matters to him: development cannot belong to one coach, one team or one department. The work has to be shared, and the knowledge gained in one part of an organisation must be useful somewhere else.

It is an idea that feels particularly relevant in Lisbon, a city whose footballing history extends well beyond its most famous academies. Luís Figo came through Sporting’s development system; Ricardo Quaresma followed a similar route, while Bernardo Silva spent his formative years at Benfica. Nélson Semedo’s journey was different. After beginning at Sintrense, he eventually entered Benfica’s system, having travelled a less direct road towards the professional game. Rui Costa, born in Damaia on the outskirts of Lisbon, also emerged from the wider metropolitan football culture before becoming one of Benfica’s defining players. These are celebrated careers, but they are not proof that the largest institutions possess a monopoly on talent. They are reminders of the network around them: local clubs, coaches, families and communities that help players develop long before the wider football world learns their names.

For a club such as Atlético, that network is not an abstract recruitment market. It is the neighbourhood beyond the training ground, the young player who has been overlooked, the coach who has learned to recognise something others have missed. Santi wants to understand how Lisbon produces footballers, and what happens to those who do not find their way into the most prominent academies. He is not yet proposing a grand system for identifying them. First, he wants to learn where to look.

Atlético’s own history offers a reason to pay attention.

The club we know today emerged from the merger of Carcavelinhos and União Foot-Ball Lisboa in 1942. Neither was simply a name waiting to be absorbed into a larger institution. Carcavelinhos, rooted in Alcântara, had already demonstrated that a neighbourhood club could compete with Lisbon’s established powers. In the 1927–28 Campeonato de Portugal, they defeated Benfica 3–0 and Sporting 3–1 on their way to winning the competition. União had its own place in the city’s football, reaching the 1929 final before losing 2–1 to Belenenses.

Their histories converged at a time when bringing the two clubs together offered the possibility of greater strength and a wider future. The merger created Atlético Clube de Portugal, but the new institution inherited more than a name. It inherited the memories, loyalties and expectations of the people who had supported its predecessors. The ambition was considerable: to establish a club capable of standing alongside Lisbon’s established institutions.

Reality arrived quickly enough. Atlético’s first official match, against Benfica in the 1942–43 season, ended in a 5–1 defeat. The distance between ambition and achievement was plain, but the club’s early years would also bring cup finals against Sporting in 1946 and Benfica in 1949. Germano, who spent thirteen years at Atlético before moving to Benfica and helping the latter establish itself among Europe’s elite, would later become another reminder that the club had contributed to Portuguese football beyond the boundaries of its own ground.

There is a story here that Santi can recognise without pretending it belongs to him. Atlético was built through the combination of existing communities, carrying their histories into a new institution and attempting to turn that inheritance into something stronger. Its history is not a simple tale of inevitable decline, nor does the past guarantee a return to former glories. It is evidence of what the club has been capable of, and a question about what it might become.

That is enough for now.

Santi has arrived without senior managerial experience, and the work ahead is more immediate than the construction of a dynasty. He must learn his players, understand his staff, discover the club’s resources and establish how he wants them to work together. He will make mistakes; he will have to listen to people who know Atlético better than he does. A workshop cannot function if the person in charge believes he is the only one capable of making anything.

The taller is not a blueprint for a finished club. It is a way of approaching the work: with curiosity, patience, shared responsibility and the willingness to improve what is already there. Before Atlético can become anything new, Santi must understand what it is made of.

For the moment, that is where the work begins