John Textor was in Portugal on Monday and watched Rio Ave against Sporting alongside Evangelos Marinakis in Vila do Conde, where Sporting came from behind to win 4-1 in the penultimate round of the liga portugal.
The match was played on 11 May 2026 and finished with Sporting taking three points after overturning Rio Ave at the end of the league campaign. The game was published at 16:43 and updated at 18:23.
Textor, the former controller of Botafogo’s SAF, was there at a moment when his football links kept crossing Marinakis’s network. Rio Ave is part of the holding led by Marinakis, who also owns Nottingham Forest and Olympiakos.
That overlap has already shaped business between the two men. In 2025, Botafogo sold Igor Jesus, Jair, John and Cuiabano to Nottingham Forest, while Danilo moved the other way. Rafael Lobato also left for Rio Ave that year.
For Textor, the trip underlined how tightly his past and present in club ownership now run through Marinakis’s orbit. For Rio Ave and Sporting, the night belonged to a comeback win in Vila do Conde; for everyone else in that network, it was another sign that the talks are no longer happening only in boardrooms.
