Frederico Varandas

Frederico Nuno Faro Varandas (born 19 September 1979) is a Portuguese medical doctor and former commissioned military captain of the Portuguese Army, who has been since 2018 the elected president of Sporting CP.

Hailing from the Avenida de Roma area in Lisbon, in his childhood, he practised gymnastics at Sporting Clube de Portugal.

He studied medicine at the Medical School of the New University of Lisbon from where he graduated in medicine in 2005 as an external medical student since he was a pupil of the Portuguese Military Academy.

He completed a postgraduate course in sports medicine in 2007.

His career in football had begun in 2007, when he joined the medical staff at Vitória Setúbal; two years later he was promoted to clinical director of the same football team, a position he held until the summer of 2011, when he was invited to become head doctor of the senior men's football team at Sporting Portugal.

In 2008, as a lieutenant military doctor, he was deployed in Afghanistan with a detachment of Portuguese Commandos which was part of the International Security Assistance Force.

In 2016, after a period of specialised training in accordance with the Portuguese Order of Physicians' (Ordem dos Médicos) guidelines, he had become a medical specialist in the field of sports medicine.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal and the ensuing state of emergency, Varandas, already the incumbent president of Sporting Portugal, was voluntarily commissioned by the Serviço Nacional de Saúde (Portugal's National Health Service) as a doctor.

Varandas was the chief doctor of Sporting Portugal's main men's professional football team until 2018.

Sousa Cintra served as acting president of Sporting Clube de Portugal - Futebol, SAD during the mandate of an emergency management committee established after the ousting of Sporting CP's president Bruno de Carvalho from his post on 24 June 2018.

After has been appointed acting president on 24 June, Cintra officially stepped down in September 2018 following the club's elections that elected Frederico Varandas as the new president of the multi-sports club.

They started dating in 2018.

Larsson has worked as supply chain manager for the Tetra Pak factory in Carnaxide, in the municipality of Oeiras.

While Varandas was working in the capacity of president of Sporting CP, a financial restructuring was started by the sports club under his direction in 2019 and included the successful renegotiation of bank debt resorting to a debt relief, as well as the repurchasing of convertible debt belonging to Novobanco and BCP at a discount to par value, which was finalized in 2024.

This allowed Sporting Clube de Portugal to take ownership of 88 per cent of Sporting Clube de Portugal – Futebol, SAD's stock from 15 February 2024 onwards, instead of the 83.90% it owned until that time.

Since 2019, and after a number of alarming scandals and illicit situations involving supporters' groups and some of its most prominent members (a fact that was also true for supporters' groups of rival clubs), the board of Sporting CP headed by Frederico Varandas, in a statement expressing disapproval of negative behaviours in the club, established a number of rules regulating organised groups of supporters which would led to the protocol of the 2022-03 season, designed to be renewed on a case-by-case and year-by-year basis:

"The protocol regulates the relationship between SCP, SCP SAD and the GOA [Organised Group of Supporters] during the 2022/2023 sporting season, establishing the terms and conditions for granting technical, financial and material support to said GOA. In accordance with what is stipulated in Law 39/2009, the protocol binds the GOA to remain in the Zones with Special Conditions of Access and Permanence of Supporters (ZCEAP)."

This yearly protocols were established in accordance with the new legal framework enacted in a draft law of 2022 submitted to the Portuguese Parliament with the aim of "strengthening mechanisms to combat violence in sport".

For the 2022–2026 quadrennium, Frederico Varandas' administration started works of building renovation and modernization of the club's facilities at the José Alvalade Stadium and the Cristiano Ronaldo Academy.

In 2024, the board of directors of Sporting CP headed by Varandas renewed the protocol with the University of Lisbon, thus continuing the link that had been in place since 2007, and announced an investment of 3 million euros in the modernisation of the EUL Pole in Lisbon, the home of the club's academy for under-13 football players, athletics and other sports.

The improvements included the construction of new football pitches, the remodelling of the synthetic turf, the construction of new stands and nine changing rooms, as well as the use of the EUL swimming pool at specific times for Sporting CP's swimming teams and the remodelling and expansion of the administrative building, thus, in addition to men's and women's football, Sporting CP's swimming and rugby departments would also benefit from the works.

Frederico Varandas is married to Katarina Larsson, a Sweden-born Portuguese former triathlete who competed for Sporting Clube de Portugal and Portugal in the triathlon, and with whom he has two children born in 2019 and 2023.

They first met each other at the sports club located in the Alvalade – Lumiar area of Lisbon.