Brazilian club Flamengo purchasing Portuguese club Leixões - for development, visibility, revenue and Champions League football

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Thought this was interesting.

Looks like Flamengo's purchase of Portuguese club Leixões is going ahead.
Found an english article on it here: https://playingfor90.com/posts/flam...league-understand-this-bold-move-01j5c4daxeh1
Brazilian source with more info here: https://ge.globo.com/futebol/times/flamengo/noticia/2024/07/27/faqs-veja-10-perguntas-e-respostas-sobre-o-projeto-do-flamengo-com-o-leixoes-de-portugal.ghtml

Some of the main points (some are collected from non-english sources)
  • Plan is the generate revenue, expand Flamengo's visibility and compete in Europe, and create a showcase for their players, especially young players transitioning from the academy to the senior football.
  • Want to restore Leixões to the top flight. The ambition is to achieve this within 2-3 years. They also want the club to get in to the Champions League in the longer term.
  • Training and selling players in Europe should yield higher transfer fees, so Flamengo looks at this as an economic opportunity. There's a study that players that play in Europe generate 20% higher transfer fees than players in South America.
  • Have already moved resources across to pay off debts and wages.
  • Have already begun renovations at the stadium, with more planned. There are also plans for investment in new players for the first team.
  • Helped the club to purchase their training field (not sure if this is pending the completion of the club purchase but they're training there already). Plans to add two more fields. Training fields were previously rented by Braga B.
  • Leixões would be a showcase for young players moving from the academy and getting closer to the first team, in addition to added European exposure. (Flamengo already have a lot of fans in Portugal (partly due to the number of Brazilian expats) and most of their games, including regional championship games are televised).
  • Flamengo will buy 56% of the club from Playfair, and inject money to fix the club's finances.
  • Leixões badge will not be changed. I've seen article say that their home kit will be unchanged too with the second kit changed, but others that say the home kits will be red and black. Leixões play in red and white vertical stripes, Flamengo play in red and black horizontal stripes. If I remember correctly,
  • Flamengo will take control over the SAD responsible for football, including the first team, B team and Under-23s. Lexiões will keep control over youth levels and the women's team and all their other sports teams. Wouldn't be surprised if youth levels and women's teams could be transferred later if the project is a success.
  • One possible issue is that Leixões has a pending legal case over corrupt practices under previous management. Leixões have appealed, but are confident the case will be overturned, but losing would see them relegated to the third tier and banned from the top 2 tiers for 2 years.

It sounds to me that Flamengo is planning to use Leixões as a B team, and place players there rather than the U23s, in addition to first team players they're looking to move on. Bit surprised they're not taking over the Leixões academy to since they have a brilliant track record of producing talents in Brazil, and some of that knowledge could be transferred.

Even if Leixões lose their legal case and Flamengo drop the purchase, it's likely they'll move through with plans either at Leixões or at another portuguese club.
They already tried to purchase Tondela in 2021 but it ended up falling through.

Leixões board have approved the purchase, Leixões fans held a protest, and they held a meeting with the fans to clarify details which is where the club badge was declared safe.
Bit of a different type of multi-club partnership. I think Flamengo are quite ambitious in getting Leixões up in to the upper half of the Primeira Liga, and getting them competitive.
Usually brazilian clubs would not be the parent club in this type of deal.

For anyone unfamiliar with Flamengo. They're one of the most financially stable clubs in Brazil and one of the most popular clubs outside of Europe.
They have excellent academy that pump out talents every year. In recent years that includes Vinicius Junior (Real Madrid), João Gomes (Wolves), Lucas Paquetá (West Ham), Natan (Napoli/Real Betis), Rodrigo Muniz (Fulham), Matheus França (Palace), Otávio (Porto) and so on. Can totally see them being able to produce the quality of players to get Leixões into the upper reaches of the Primeira Liga, especially if coupled with some purchases.


Thoughts on this?
Fair of them to exploit the financial opportunities in Europe that aren't available to South American clubs, or the same mould as other multi-club projects?
 
Rightfully, it's time for them to be able to develop and sell their players for 100mil rather than keep losing young talented players to Europe.

Portuguese club has developed lots of young players sold for very high prices
 
It's similar to other multi club models, it's just not the huge scale we see with some clubs. Watford/Udinese and Brighton and their club that I've forgotten the name of levels. It would be good to see some of the Brazilian kids over in Europe before they make a big move.

The strange thing is that they are looking to send development level players, when usually their top talents play in the men's league from an early age.
 
This may be a genius idea if it works out for them, eager to see how it ends up.
 
Would have thought that go get Champions League in Portugal they'd need to send their best with Sporting, Porto and Benfica to compete against. Throw in Braga as a 4th.
 
Not a fan of club badges being changed in general, but Leixões' could do with an update... not in the style of Flamengo's, but it could be better.

Good luck to them in aims of competing for Champions League but isn't the league at a point where they only have two qualifying places now? And the established big three in Porto, Benfica and Sporting, plus arguably the fourth club in Braga will be incredibly hard to break into, especially if they're going to keep Flamengo's best young players for their first team and just send the ones that are developing more to Leixões.
 
P-Nut said:
It's similar to other multi club models, it's just not the huge scale we see with some clubs. Watford/Udinese and Brighton and their club that I've forgotten the name of levels. It would be good to see some of the Brazilian kids over in Europe before they make a big move.

The strange thing is that they are looking to send development level players, when usually their top talents play in the men's league from an early age.
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Chipper said:
Would have thought that go get Champions League in Portugal they'd need to send their best with Sporting, Porto and Benfica to compete against. Throw in Braga as a 4th.
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Damien said:
Not a fan of club badges being changed in general, but Leixões' could do with an update... not in the style of Flamengo's, but it could be better.

Good luck to them in aims of competing for Champions League but isn't the league at a point where they only have two qualifying places now? And the established big three in Porto, Benfica and Sporting, plus arguably the fourth club in Braga will be incredibly hard to break into, especially if they're going to keep Flamengo's best young players for their first team and just send the ones that are developing more to Leixões.
Click to expand...

At the moment, players like Vinicus jr, Reinier, Lucas Paquetá and Muniz, and soon Lorran is snapped up the moment they get to the first team, sometimes before they get to the first team. I think offering an outlet that competes in european comps would mean they could keep those players longer. And let then develop at Leixoes before selling which, if they perform in europe, would also help increase the selling price.

Would also mean that players that doesn’t perform in Europe might filter back to Flamengo. They already bring back brazilians from europe (like gabigol, gerson etc) but have to pay a lot to do so.

And Flamengo are big enough in Brazil to see some players now and then opt to stay there even amid European interest.
 
If this goes through, I hope Marcos Braz has zero involvement in it.
 
Champions League is pretty ambitious unless Portugal secure a 4th spot. They'll have to develop the club from a standing start to compete with Benfica, Porto and Sporting. On top of that Braga have proven themselves to be a half decent team. That said, Europa up will give them a good platform.
 
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