In an exclusive interview with Sky Sports, Filipe Celikkaya explains how his close relationship with Ruben Amorim as coach of Sporting’s B team in Lisbon helped win titles in Portugal and why England is on his radar as he looks for a new challenge...
Monday 20 May 2024 15:09, UK
The success of Ruben Amorim at Sporting has made him one of the most in-demand coaches in Europe but the club’s success runs deeper than just one man. It is the connection with the academy and B team that has helped underpin the club’s renaissance.
When Amorim took over in 2020, one of his first moves was to invite Filipe Celikkaya to take over Sporting's B team. The pair knew each other from their days in the Belenenses youth team. Amorim went on to play for his country. Celikkaya took a different path.
"As soon as I understood that I could not achieve the level that I wanted as a player, I was determined to stay in football," he tells Sky Sports. "My objective in life became coaching. I prepared myself. I studied and did my qualifications when I was very young."
Celikkaya coached in Benfica's academy, working with Ruben Dias when the Manchester City defender was just 14 years old. "He had the quality already." There were experienced abroad, including title success as an assistant manager with Shakhtar Donetsk.
But the opportunity to work with Amorim was too tempting to ignore. "We think in the same way, we behave the same way, we understand each other very well. He invited me to be part of something that we thought could be great. We were not wrong."
Sporting won the Portuguese title for the first time in 19 years in that first season and have repeated the feat this time around. That success has seen Amorim linked with a move to the Premier League and his old friend understands why there is such interests.
"I think Ruben will be successful wherever he will be because he has the knowledge and he is also a very good person. Those two things are the steps to having a very good career. He creates a very good environment. It is fantastic. That is one of his secrets."
But Celikkaya's role in all this is fascinating because he was not brought in to work with the first team but to develop players for it. That has been fundamental to Amorim's success. "In four years, 25 players from the B team played for the first team," says Celikkaya.
"To be so connected to the first team, that is not usual, you know. Few clubs do that. But Sporting are known for their education of the youth and bringing players through. They wanted to put more effort into that bigger picture. We worked on it every day."
The rewards are now obvious. Eduardo Quaresma and Geny Catamo, former B team players, have had pivotal roles, the latter scoring twice in the Lisbon derby win over Benfica in April. "These are the players that we want. It is an investment by the club."
Those are just the players who have graduated to Sporting's first team. There is Rodrigo Ribeiro, on loan at Nottingham Forest. "We saw his talent." Abdul Fatawu has lit up Leicester's Championship title-winning season. "He will have a brilliant future."
For Celikkaya, a clear pathway helps but there is much more to it than that. "It is a lot of work, from the recruitment to the methodology to that transition phase where I came in." Developing the person as well as the player is a big priority for Sporting.
"When you are coaching kids you need to teach them - and not just about football. It is about life, about human beings. If you are a good person, you are probably more open to listening and learning. And then you can work with them more easily," he explains.
"Society has changed because of phones but we make sure our players shake everyone's hand and look them in the eye, ask them how they are. You cannot allow those things to disappear because football is a collective sport. Everyone depends on each other."
Perhaps surprisingly given the depth of the connection between Celikkaya and Amorim, in 2021, Sporting's B team actually abandoned the idea of adopting the favoured 3-4-3 formation used to such success by the first team. It was a calculated decision.
"Most of the young players at Sporting had been playing in a 4-3-3 formation for a long time so from the second year we did not want to change that," Celikkaya explains. "The system is not so important. That will come when they reach the first team."
He adds: "We teach them the principles. Depth behind the defensive lines, how to get one-against-one in the channel, how to go to the box aggressively to score, pressing after losing it, getting behind the ball when they break the first line. Those concepts remain."
And besides, there is so much contact with Amorim's senior side that they receive this exposure anyway. "On average, a player from Sporting's B team trains with the first team 40 times a year. It is fantastic for them. So it is not just my work. It is our work together."
That work has now come to an end. Amorim may be staying at Sporting but Celikkaya has decided that the time is right to move on. "It is going to be challenging but I want it," he reveals. "The opportunity can be anywhere in the world but I want a first team."
He has big ambitions, pointing to the fact that Pep Guardiola's coaching career began with Barcelona B, while Erik ten Hag and Xabi Alonso were B team coaches at Bayern Munich and Real Sociedad, respectively. "History shows what is possible," says Celikkaya.
What is his vision for the game? "My playing philosophy is to dominate. I want to have the ball and create opportunities. I need to score more goals and I do not want to suffer so I want to have a positional game, occupying the field with width and depth."
"That is my education. I cannot see the game another way. But I can build with four and I can build with three as well, it depends on the opponent. When I lose the ball, I want to react very quickly to win it back as soon as possible. If not, I need to defend my goal."
His coaching influences go beyond Amorim. He mentions Gian Piero Gasperini's man-to-man marking and more. "We are learning every day because the information is coming so quickly, you need to pay a lot of attention to what your colleagues are doing," he says.
"Football evolves so quickly that we had a department at Sporting studying it. I wanted to see Roberto De Zerbi's build-up, to see Xabi Alonso's build-up, to see Thiago Motta's build-up. I wanted to see all the changes that were happening in coaching."
Perhaps the next change could be the emergence of Filipe Celikkaya.
