Portugal have a knack for producing great wingers. Ricardo Quaresma, Nani and a certain Cristiano Ronaldo come to mind, and filling those boots is no easy task. When I first wrote this, I flagged a much less-known prodigy than João Félix as a possible successor: Francisco Trincão. SC Braga were no longer the force they once were, but they still knew how to raise talent. Here is that profile as it stood, and then what actually happened.
Player Profile: Francisco Trincão
Date of Birth: December 29, 1999
Place of Birth: Viana do Castelo, Portugal
Nationality: Portuguese
Height: 184cm
Position: Right Winger (also Left Winger, Second Striker)
Preferred Foot: Left
What we saw then: who was Francisco Trincão?
Born in Viana do Castelo, Trincão started with hometown club SC Vianese. Porto noted him around 2009/10 and took him, but it lasted only a season and he moved back home, where he again caught scouts' eyes. At thirteen he signed for SC Braga.
A loan to Palmeiras U17 followed to push his development. He had been working through Braga's ranks into first-team appearances, some in Europe, and he had lifted the European U19 Championship in 2017/18, jointly topping the scoring charts with 5 goals.
His style, as it read then
A winger usually played on the opposite side to his stronger foot, Trincão loved to cut inside from the right, that Arjen Robben move. Everyone on the pitch knows it is coming and it still works, because the threat of the shot pins the full-back and opens the outside ball. Doing so, he found shooting chances or created them, backed by roughly a key pass and 1.1 shots a game that season. That is a healthy return for a teenager who was mostly coming off the bench.
He offered little defensively, around 0.4 tackles a game, but that is common for wingers and no shock given how much of his energy went into attacking. What set him apart was the technical work: dribbling that got him past his man more than once a game in a defensive league, a lovely first touch that let him take the ball in tight, real flair to break a game with one counter-attack, and the vision to switch play from one flank to the other. The last one is underrated in a young wide player. Plenty can beat a man; fewer can also pick out the runner on the far side. He was the kind of winger any coach would want to build a front three around.
The weaknesses were the ones you forgive in a teenager. Tackling was poor, and anticipation and concentration held back his minutes, because a young winger who does not track back consistently is a hard sell to a coach who wants two banks of defensive cover. Heading worried me more, and it tied back to a reluctance to commit to duels. That reluctance is the one flag I would have circled twice, since it can follow a technical player his whole career if the confidence never fully arrives. None of it was fatal for a player with time on his side, and the upside plainly outweighed it.
Our view back then
At twenty I thought the smart move was Benfica or Porto, the well-worn Portuguese route, or a mid-table Spanish side to develop at a competitive level. For the dream tier I named 13-time European champions Real Madrid, and their rivals, Catalan giants FC Barcelona. I marked England and Italy, Manchester City and Juventus, as risky wildcards where minutes would be hard to find. I am leaving all of that on the page, because one of those calls landed almost immediately and the rest is a useful record of how a scout reads a teenager.
Where is he now
The dream move happened faster than I expected. Barcelona signed him, so the leap I filed under "dream" arrived at the start of his senior career rather than the end of it. That is a heavy load to hand a twenty-year-old, and it showed. He got minutes, 28 appearances in that first La Liga season, but the numbers below make clear he was a rotation option rather than a fixture, which is roughly where a player with his profile lands when he is dropped straight into a squad of that level.
A Premier League loan at Wolves followed, another tough room for a confidence player, and it did not spark him either. Then Sporting CP is where his game finally caught fire. That reluctance in duels I worried about back then never became the story, because Sporting built the side to let him do the two things he was always best at: cutting inside and creating. The wide creator I described has turned into a genuine goals-and-assists winger, and the jump in his output once he settled is exactly what our numbers show.
| Season | Club | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020/21 | Barcelona | 28 | 3 |
| 2021/22 | Wolves | 28 | 2 |
| 2022/23 | Sporting CP | 34 | 10 |
| 2023/24 | Sporting CP | 31 | 9 |
| 2024/25 | Sporting CP | 34 | 9 |
| 2025/26 | Sporting CP | 34 | 7 |
Remember the name, I wrote back then. The Barcelona line came off, and I will happily take the credit for calling that one, but the more honest lesson is that the destination I got right was not where he actually became good. The version of Trincão who is producing week in, week out is the Sporting one, and it took a loan, a move back to Portugal and a couple of years for that player to arrive. If there is a takeaway for reading teenagers, it is that the right club matters more than the biggest club, and the road to becoming a player who reaches the top of the footballing world is rarely a straight line. For his current rating and the full breakdown, see his live scout report.
