From Tottenham reject to Champions League hero – the heroic rise of Edwards at Sporting

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Potential Man Utd star?  

©IMAGO

Few things can spin the rumour mill into action quite like a manager moving to one of the Premier League’s big clubs and there’s little doubt that Rúben Amorim’s seemingly imminent move to Manchester United in the coming days has led to a number of Sporting’s top stars also being tipped with a move to the Old Trafford club. But few seem to be garnering as much interest as English winger Marcus Edwards. 

Multiple reports have linked the 25-year-old talent with Man Utd, with very little regard for the fact that Amorim’s predecessor, Erik Ten Hag, more or less dug his own grave in Manchester after convincing the club to spend untold fortunes on players from his former club Ajax. As such, a move to the Red Devils is likely to remain little more than speculation for Edwards for the time being, but that doesn’t mean a move to the Premier League is entirely off the cards. 

The young Englishman made the move to Portuguese football in 2019 after departing Tottenham’s youth teams on a free transfer to join Vitória Guimarães and has gone from strength to strength since then, where he is now worth €18 million and remains subject of constant media speculation linking him to a number of English clubs. After departing his native country, the young forward hit the ground running in the Portuguese top flight, with no less than seven goals and seven assists in just 26 games. And by the end of his first season at the club, Edwards’ market value had shot up from €1.25m to an impressive €13m.

Edwards’ next season and a half at Vitória took a slight dip, with just 10 goals and six assists in 51 league games, but it was upon his €7.5m move to Sporting in January 2022 that Liga Portugal fans really saw the former Spurs youth player hit his stride in a team that could offer him far more attacking chances per game. As such, Edwards picked up no less than three goals and three assists in his 12 league games in the second half of the 2021/22 season. Only to then improve on that with a remarkable 12 goals and 14 assists in all competitions for Sporting in the following season, where the Lisbon club reached the final of the Portuguese Cup and the quarter-finals of the Europa League. 

The 23/24 campaign would be a special one for Sporting, as Amorim led the club to only their second league title in 20 years. And while Edwards struggled with injuries and match fitness – as well as a red card suspension in the dying weeks of the season – the English winger undoubtedly played his part, with nine goals and assists in 26 league appearances. Most of which coming in the first half of the season, when Sporting lost just two of their opening 15 league games. However, the player’s own personal highlight at Sporting to date may have instead came in an earlier Champions League campaign, when Sporting picked up an impressive 1-1 draw in North London against Tottenham. Which just so happened to feature a fantastic performance from Edwards, in which he scored the all-important goal for his side against the very club that deemed him surplus to requirement. 

Such delights from scoring in front of English crowds certainly hasn’t been lost on Edwards and while he seems perfectly content in Lisbon, the young winger has rarely hidden his ambitions of returning to the Premier League to test his talents.  When asked by the Evening Standard in 2022 if his move to Sporting had turned his career around, Edwards said: “Definitely. Everyone has a different journey. For me it worked out, going over there and it clicked straight away. It has been good for me, but I would love to play in England [again] and be near my family.” He added: “I have grown up in a lot of ways, I’m 23 and last time I was at Tottenham, I was only 17, 18. I was only a baby, so I have grown up. I was just a kid, you know what kids are like.”

Whether Edwards’ role leads him back to England or even to Old Trafford alongside Amorim remains to be seen, but few could doubt that he’s risen to the occasion of proving himself in Portugal. And with constant speculation surrounding his future and a number of Premier League sides reportedly interested in signing him, it seems like only a matter of time before the winger gets to prove himself in the English top-flight.