I worked with Hugo Viana and Ruben Amorim at Sporting CP - it's clear what Man City and Man United will get

Filipe Celikkaya had just won the league title in Ukraine when he got an offer to come home that he felt he couldn't refuse.

Hugo Viana wanted to set up a B team for the Sporting CP academy in 2020 and wanted Celikkaya to come back to Lisbon and run it. Celikkaya agreed on one condition: if ever Viana or fellow friend and Sporting manager Ruben Amorim were to leave, he would go to; he would not stick around to work without his close friends who shared his vision.

Viana promised 'something special' and Celikkaya followed his instinct, and after four years together none could believe quite how spectacularly it had paid off. Sporting became Portuguese champions for the first time in 20 years before adding another title, and in addition to supplying the senior squad in Lisbon the B team has supplied players across three continents and 15 countries over the past four years.

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The four years Celikkaya spent running the B team in Sporting is the longest spell he has had anywhere in 17 years of coaching. Having started at the age of 21 after realising he wouldn't make it as a professional player - he came through the youth team at Belenenses with Amorim - Celikkaya has taken on a range of roles in countries including Ukraine and Qatar in a bid to expand his football knowledge.

"I went to Al Ahli to discover another type of football and way of thinking. I think it's very important to the coach that wants to grow as a coach that he needs to know the world and have a global view of the football world," he told the Manchester Evening News.

"After these experiences, you get better because you are able to understand different cultures and point of views. Everything changes in your mindset.

"We grow looking for our colleagues and their work, speaking to them and asking them why they do things, how they intervene in training and when they correct things. I can always learn from my peers."

A book given to him by his dad when he was a teenager, The Theory of Collective Sport by Claude Bayer, lit the fires of understanding how everything in football works and his belief that it is necessary to understand the game all over the world has led him to take up a number of invitations that have inevitably created more opportunities.

Winning district titles with local Lisbon side Almada led to working in the Benfica academy teaching Ruben Dias and Renato Sanches; from there, he moved with future Benfica head coach Bruno Lage to Al Ahli in Saudi Arabia. Two years at Sporting's academy followed, before a return to being an assistant - this time under Luis Castro at Vitoria; securing Europa League football there earned them a move to Shakhtar, where they won the Ukranian title for the first time and reached the semi-finals of the Europa League after taking a point off City in the Champions League.

If it was bold of Celikkaya to test himself in foreign environments, it was boldness from Viana to tempt him back to Lisbon after just one year in Ukraine. The pair had briefly met earlier in their careers when Celikkaya left a coaching post at Al Ahli just as Viana arrived, and the sporting director had seen enough since to be convinced that they could work well together.

"It was a risky decision," Celikkaya said. "I was a champion with Shakhtar and went to a club who had not been champions for 18 years. I tried to help them to be in a good position and I said from day one when I signed my contract if Ruben gets out or Viana gets out I get out as well.

"It was like a mission. I think it was the right choice but I had to feel it - sometimes you just get a feel.

"Our feelings were that if we joined knowledge with good people and there was a path to build with a vision so clear that everybody knows what we want to achieve. It was very motivating for me to come back home again to my city and my club to work with people that I like that they look at me as a person that can achieve the objectives and have knowledge to create something special.

"It was a fantastic decision to leave Shakhtar and come back to Sporting. Because we are three of the same age almost - I am the same age as Ruben and Viana is older by a year or two - it's easy to get along because we have experience. We have knowledge to share about what we thought was the best for the club and we had a lot of success, promoting a lot of players to the first team and the club selling players that we find to all different countries, especially in the Premier League.

"Renato Veiga is at Chelsea, Mateus Fernandes is playing at Southampton, [Abdul] Fatawu is playing at Leicester after being the best young player in the Championship, Matheus Nunes is at City, [Pedro] Porro is at Spurs - those two weren't coached by me but were very important for the club as well as (Manuel) Ugarte at Man United. We had a lot of players who went through our hands who are now in the best league in our world."

Celikkaya earned promotion and enjoyed a run to the semi-finals of the UEFA Youth League in 2022/23 with Sporting Under-19s and their academy remains one of the best in Europe for producing talent. The coach left in summer to wait for a new opportunity and enjoyed picking Pep Guardiola's brain when he recently caught up with Dias and Nunes in Manchester and observed training.

Wherever his next coaching job takes him, there will be return trips to Manchester in future to dine with his good friends Viana and Amorim after they take up key positions at City and United. Amorim will become the fifth United manager Guardiola has faced in his nine seasons at the Etihad with the Reds churning through coaches in an attempt to compete with City for league titles.

As he prepares to face the Blues first with Sporting in the Champions League on Tuesday and then next month with United, Amorim has the full backing of his friend and former colleague.

"I'm not surprised because I know him deeply," he added. "He's a very good signing and I think in the future nearby the fans of United will be very happy because he will create an impact. I'm very happy for him, I wish all the best for him and his family because he deserves it."

City will have to give more attention to Amorim soon, but more urgently they also have to concern themselves with the Sporting academy products helped through by Celikkaya that are hoping to cause a Champions League upset.