Can Renato Sanches Turn His Career around at Benfica?
Renato Sanches was 18 years old when he made his first-team debut for Benfica on October 30, 2015. Over the next nine months, Renato would become Benfica’s youngest player to score a home goal in the 21st century, emerge as a key figure in midfield under Rui Vitória, and win the Primeira Liga and Taça da Liga with his boyhood club. These performances would see him win the Primeira Liga Breakthrough Player and Golden Boy awards in the process, and they would also see him join Bayern Munich for an initial €35 million, the highest fee at the time for a Portuguese player playing in the Primeira Liga.
The teenage talent jetted off to France and excelled by winning the Young Player of the Tournament and helping Portugal to win the 2016 Euros, Portugal’s first-ever trophy, before heading to Germany. However, he struggled to make a name for himself in Bavaria and found himself surplus to requirements, prompting him to be loaned out to Premier League side Swansea City. After an unconvincing loan spell in Wales, Renato headed back to Munich, where he once again found himself far down in the pecking order.
It was time for a new chapter: Renato joined Lille for a club-record €25 million, and it didn’t take long before he made that transfer fee look like a bargain. The Portuguese midfielder was able to get back to his best in northern France, leading Lille to their first Ligue 1 title in a decade as Les Dogues edged Paris Saint-Germain to the championship on the final day of the 2020/21 campaign.
If you can’t beat them, buy them: PSG signed him for €10 million in 2022. However, his reunion with Christophe Galtier — with whom he won the league in 2021 — did not exactly pan out. He struggled to beat out competition from the likes of Marco Verratti, Vitinha and Fabián Ruiz, prompting PSG to loan him out to Roma, where he failed to make his mark.
Once again, Renato was unable to convince due to both heightened squad competition as well as injury issues, and returned to Paris. Eight years after leaving Benfica, Renato returned to his boyhood club on loan with an option to make the deal permanent, joining as a makeweight in the deal to send João Neves to Paris.
At 27 years old, Renato Sanches should be at the peak of his powers, but instead, he finds himself at a crossroads. However, time is still on his side as he looks to reach his world-class ceiling — that is, according to Atlético-CP manager Nikola Popović, who coached Renato during his time at Benfica B.
“At the time, it was obviously Renato Sanches who showed the most potential out of all my players,” said Popović in a Bola Na Rede interview. “So much so that at that time, manager Rui Vitória called him up, but he really was a player with extraordinary potential for his age.”
“He was an all-action, box-to-box midfielder, a player with extraordinary capabilities, so it’s no surprise that he then goes to the Benfica first team, to the Seleção, to Bayern Munich. I think he was the player that you could clearly see would be part of the great players at national level. He was still very young at the time, but I think Renato, in my opinion, if he hadn’t had so much misfortune in terms of injuries and I think he still has time to become one of the best players in the world.”
Bit by bit, Renato is finding regular game-time at Benfica, even if that means coming off the bench. He’s played eight matches thus far, including one start against former club Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League. However, he is yet to shake off the injury-prone label that has marred him for the first decade of his professional career. Renato hasn’t played since November 10 in a 4-1 drubbing of Porto — does he have what it takes to shake off his fitness woes, get back to his best at Benfica, and fill João Neves’ void? Only time will tell.
By: Zach Lowy / @ZachLowy
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Soccrates Images – Getty Images