Futebol Clube do Porto is a Portuguese sports club based in Porto that is best known for its professional football team playing in the country's top-tier division, the Primeira Liga. Founded in 1893, the club soon entered a period of inactivity until its revival in 1906 by a group of people led by future president José Monteiro da Costa. The following year, Monteiro da Costa invited Adolphe Cassaigne, a Frenchman, to become the football team's first official head coach, replacing Italian player-coach Catullo Gadda.
As of the end of the 2025–26 season, Porto have had 72 managers of 16 nationalities, eight of which assumed caretaking roles. A total of 30 managers completed at least one season with the club, and 28 won at least one title. Hungary's József Szabó is Porto's most successful manager with 12 titles, including 10 regional championships. Excluding regional honours, the most successful manager is Sérgio Conceição, with eleven titles. Tomislav Ivić and André Villas-Boas share the club record for most titles in a single season, with four.
The current manager is Francesco Farioli, who replaced Martín Anselmi after the club rescinded contract with the Argentine coach at the end of the 2024–25 season, just five months after his appointment. Farioli is the fourth Italian manager in Porto's history, and the first since Luigi Del Neri's brief spell in 2004.
History
1906–48: First coach and Hungarian era
Following the club's rebirth in 1906, Catullo Gadda, who won the Italian title with Milan in 1901, assumed the team's orientation as a player-coach and is historically considered Porto's first-ever manager. The following year, club president José Monteiro da Costa invited Adolphe Cassaigne, a Frenchman who worked with local school football teams, to become Porto's first full-time manager. Cassaigne led the team to victories in the 1914–15 Campeonato do Porto and the 1922 Campeonato de Portugal, the club's first regional and national titles.Tovar (2011), pp. 38, 50. Ahead of the 1922–23 season, Cassaigne was succeeded by Ákos Teszler, who signed the first professional coaching contract in Portuguese football.Tovar (2011), p. 51. Under the Hungarian's leadership, Porto won five successive regional championship titles and secured their second Campeonato de Portugal in 1924–25.Tovar (2011), pp. 56, 707.
At the end of the 1926–27 season, Teszler abandoned the club; one of his players, Alexandre Cal, took over the team temporarily and secured another regional title.Tovar (2011), pp. 62, 65. Cal gave way to another Hungarian manager, József Szabó, who would win more titles for the club (10) than any other after him.Tovar (2011), p. 68. He won a record eight consecutive Campeonato do Porto titles – raising the club's tally to 21 in 23 seasons – and led the club in an unbeaten 1931–32 campaign that secured both regional and national titles.Tovar (2011), p. 81. The 1934–35 season saw the birth of the Primeira Liga, a nationwide competition contested in a home-and-away round-robin format; Porto were the inaugural winners, ahead of Sporting CP and Benfica. Szabó left Porto after three matches into the 1936–37 Primeira Liga.Tovar (2011), p. 98. Two other Hungarian coaches – Mihály Siska, a former club goalkeeper, and Magyar Ferenc, who inflicted heavy defeats upon Sporting CP (10–1), Belenenses (9–1) and Braga (11–0) – took charge until the end of the season, but failed to win a trophy.Tovar (2011), pp. 98–100. Magyar's successor was Austrian coach François Gutkas, who continued Porto's regional dominance with a 19th title, and won the club's fourth and final Campeonato de Portugal in 1937.Tovar (2011), p. 104. Siska returned the following season; in his five-season tenure, Porto collected three more regional titles and won two consecutive league titles for the first time (1938–39 and 1939–40).
For the 1942–43 season, Porto hired Lippo Hertzka,Tovar (2011), p. 142. a Hungarian manager who had won the La Liga with Real Madrid and three consecutive league titles with Benfica. Although successful in the regional championship, Hertzka performed poorly at national level. In three years, Porto never finished top three in the league, and in his first season, the club had its second-worst league placing ever (seventh). During this period, Porto also suffered their heaviest defeat against Benfica, 12–2. Hertzka was replaced by Szabó, but his second spell with Porto was less successful, winning only two regional titles.Tovar (2011), p. 160. Midway through the 1947–48 pre-season, Szabó resigned and Porto asked former player Carlos Nunes to temporarily assume the head coach position.Tovar (2011), p. 172. Before the beginning of the season, Porto hired Eladio Vaschetto, a retired Argentine player with no previous coaching experience. Vaschetto's biggest achievement was a 3–2 win over English champions Arsenal in a friendly match played on 6 May 1948, which was immortalised by the colossal Taça Arsenal (Arsenal Cup).
1948–76: First double and title droughts
After Vaschetto's exit in the summer of 1948, Porto had ten coaches in a period of seven years – including Vaschetto again, who returned for the first half of the 1951–52 season – but none were able to bring any silverware for the club. The lack of trophies was accentuated with the abolition of the regional championship in 1947, which Porto had dominated with 30 wins in 34 seasons. The club returned to winning ways in the 1955–56 season, under the orientation of its first Brazilian coach, Dorival Knippel, better known as Yustrich.Tovar (2011), p. 218. The 1955–56 Primeira Divisão title was secured through a head-to-head tiebreak with Benfica, after both teams finished with the same points. The following month, Yustrich guided Porto to its first Taça de Portugal title, securing thus the club's first double. The Brazilian left Porto soon after, but returned a year later to replace his compatriot Flávio Costa, after a trophyless season.Tovar (2011), p. 224.
Yustrich left Porto definitively after failing to win the 1957–58 league, but his successor and countryman, Otto Bumbel, took the team to the Taça de Portugal final, where they defeated Benfica.Tovar (2011), p. 230. Bumbel led Porto in the first eight matches of the 1958–59 Primeira Divisão, but after two successive draws, he was replaced by Béla Guttmann.Tovar (2011), p. 237. The experienced Hungarian coach won the club's fifth league title by a one-goal margin over Benfica,Tovar (2011), p. 241. but could not overcome them in the Taça de Portugal final.Tovar (2011), p. 236. The following season, Guttmann moved to Benfica, where he would win two consecutive European Cup titles. After his exit, Porto entered another long period of silverware drought, despite the signing of experienced and successful coaches such as Ferdinand Daučík (Spanish champion with Barcelona and Atlético Madrid) and Otto Glória (Taça de Portugal winner with Benfica and Belenenses).Tovar (2011), pp. 242, 268.
For the 1966–67 season, Porto brought in its former captain and Portuguese international José Maria Pedroto.Tovar (2011), p. 286. He would serve the club as head coach on three separate spells and become the coach with the most official games for Porto.Tovar (2011), p. 710. Most importantly for the club, Pedroto would also help lay the foundations for a continuously competitive team that could battle in equal terms against both domestic and foreign opponents. After a fruitless debut season, Pedroto put an end to the club's nine-year run without winning a trophy by securing its third Taça de Portugal in June 1968.Tovar (2011), p. 292. The following season, Porto came close to win the league title, but compromising results in the last matches consigned the team to a runner-up finish, which led to Pedroto's resignation.Tovar (2011), p. 298. Similarly to the post-Guttmann years, Porto spent several seasons without winning a domestic title after Pedroto's resignation. During this period, the club hired several coaches with successful career records – Elek Schwartz,Tovar (2011), p. 304. Tommy Docherty, Fernando Riera,Tovar (2011), p. 324. Aymoré Moreira,Tovar (2011), p. 336. and Branko StankovićTovar (2011), p. 342. – but neither delivered the long-awaited league title.
1976–88: Return of Pedroto and international success
In the summer of 1976, Porto brought back Pedroto,Tovar (2011), p. 349. who had just won back-to-back Taça de Portugal titles with city rivals Boavista. He ended the club's eight-year trophy drought by winning his third consecutive cup final, played at Porto's stadium. The following season, Pedroto overcame Benfica on goal difference to bring the championship title back to Porto, 19 years after having played in the club's last league-winning squad.Tovar (2011), p. 355. That season, Pedroto also took the team to the quarter-finals of a European competition for the first time, after eliminating Manchester United from the Cup Winners' Cup. Porto won the 1978–79 Primeira Divisão, defending the league title for the first time since 1939–40.Tovar (2011), p. 362. They were on the verge of an unprecedented third successive league triumph, but compromising results in the last matches surrendered the title to Sporting CP.Tovar (2011), p. 368. Defeat in the cup final for the second year running contributed to the increasing unrest between Porto's president Américo de Sá and the team staff, which culminated in the resignation of Pedroto and the director of football Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa.
Austria's Hermann Stessl was the club's choice to succeed Pedroto; he lost the league and cup titles to Benfica in his first season, but defeated them in the first official edition of the domestic super cup, the Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira.Tovar (2011), pp. 377, 384. On 23 April 1982, Pinto da Costa won the club's presidential election; one of his first decisions was to bring back Pedroto, who had been coaching Vitória de Guimarães.Tovar (2011), p. 391. Despite his return, the club finished the 1982–83 season as runners-up to Benfica in the league and cup final. The latter result, however, allowed Porto to participate in the following season's Cup Winners' Cup, in which they reached their first-ever European final, losing 2–1 to Juventus. For this match, the team was led by assistant coach António Morais, who had been replacing a disease-stricken Pedroto since December 1983.Tovar (2011), p. 398.
For the 1984–85 season, the club entrusted the head coach position to Artur Jorge, a former club player whose coaching career began as Pedroto's assistant in Guimarães.Tovar (2011), p. 406. His first season was almost perfect, as he guided the team to their eighth league and third Supertaça titles, failing only against Benfica in the cup final. A second consecutive championship title in 1985–86 earned Artur Jorge's team an entry to the 1986–87 European Cup. Porto reached the tournament final, coming from behind to inflict European heavyweights Bayern Munich a surprising 2–1 defeat and lift their first international trophy. Artur Jorge left the club soon after this victory; to his place came Tomislav Ivić, a coach with club titles in Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece. Under Ivić, Porto achieved their second double and completed their international success by winning the European Super Cup and Intercontinental Cup.Tovar (2011), p. 428.
1988–2002: Penta architects and engineers