“The exact model of a populist movement”: the rise and fall of Bruno de Carvalho as president of Sporting Clube de Portugal.

Abstract

Taking the crisis of a major Portuguese sports club as a starting point, this paper analyses the emergence of what was called “the perfect model of a populist movement”. Drawing on the Polanyian concept of double movement, my central argument is that to understand the rise and fall of Bruno de Carvalho as club president it is fundamental to consider the transformations on the governance models of Portuguese clubs since the mid-1990s, their place in a new global political economy of football and their relationship with the specific moral economy of large sections of Portuguese supporters. The paper is grounded on a wide range of sources, including, but not limited, to the press, club supporters' blogs, president memoirs and participant observation, to explore the electoral cycles that brought Bruno de Carvalho to power and the debates that took place inside the club between 2011 and 2018.