On 27 July 2025, SAIKARU's name went on a Lisboa manager ballot. Three days later it closed with 15,033 votes for kristianw0w and none for him.

Fifteen months on, SAIKARU's Lisboa top PRT Division 1 with 49 points from 20 games, three clear of Porto. They have won nine league games in a row. Their 67 goals are more than double anyone else's in the division (Benfica are next on 30), and they have conceded only 12.

He has barely posted on Discord, and nobody there argues about him. The ledgers say plenty instead.

The long road to Lisbon

SAIKARU started at Vizela in January 2025 and won PRT Division 2 in Season 1, with 30 wins in 41 games. He then moved to Amadora, who had finished ninth in the top flight, and lifted them to sixth in Season 2.

Lisboa was the club he kept coming back to. He held influence there from the early weeks and voted in its January 2025 manager ballot. On 26 July 2025 he handed 490 Lisboa shares to an account called TugaCapital. The next day his own name went on the ballot he lost 15,033–0.

The door finally opened in 2026. Wagsnor had taken the vacant job in January and soon went to Discord's #jobs channel asking for help to keep it:

Then I saw there was a free position at Lisboa (no active coach). I took the manager position... Sad because I'm an active manager.

On 11 March a ballot between SAIKARU and Wagsnor closed 4,340 to 11. SAIKARU and TugaCapital both voted for SAIKARU. His Amadora record ends at 19:24:17 and his Lisboa record begins 46 seconds later. Four days after that, Wagsnor took over at Amadora for a short spell. When SAIKARU went back there on 3 October, Lisboa won 5-0.

A job, not a stake

SAIKARU owns no Lisboa influence today. The 64 shares he bought around his appointment went to TugaCapital on 14 March. His ledger shows he has done the same before. In July 2025 he moved stakes in dozens of clubs to TugaCapital and player stakes to TugaSport, who now manages Almería. TugaCapital is now Lisboa's third-biggest holder, with 4,340 shares.

The biggest holder is krille120, with 15,000 of the 43,692 shares (34%). On 14 March he joined SAIKARU in voting to unlock the new manager, a shareholder sign-off new bosses need. A few hours later a new ballot opened, and krille120 put all 15,000 votes behind bringing back kristianw0w. It closed 15,000 to nil, but the records show SAIKARU's reign carried on without a break.

By August, the two men were doing business with each other.

Transfer philosophy: few deals, big ones

SAIKARU has made eight deals in seven months:

• Sold: Moussa Niakhaté to Barcelona for 75.56M SVC (his predecessor had paid 67.5M), Maximiliano Araújo to Frankfurt for 36.06M, and three smaller sales
• Bought: Diogo Santos Nascimento from Beograd Red for 51M, a midfielder from M Haifa for 23M, and a 93-rated Guinean centre-forward from Dortmund for 105M

That is a net spend of 61.35M, and the club still has 72.45M SVC in the bank.

Two of those deals tell you how he thinks. Diogo Nascimento was a regular in his Vizela title side, with 7 assists in 31 games. Vizela listed him for auction in SAIKARU's final week there, and he joined Beograd Red for 31M the day after SAIKARU left. SAIKARU paid 20M more than that to bring him back. Diogo has 8 assists in 14 league games.

The striker came from krille120's Dortmund, and krille120 is also his agent. Dortmund listed him at 125M, then cut the asking price to 105M two days later, and Lisboa paid exactly 105M. Before his debut Lisboa had scored 6 goals in five league games. They have scored 61 in the 15 since, and he has 19 of them.

The shape-shifter

SAIKARU doesn't stick to one system. In his last ten games he used four formations: 4-1-4-1 five times, plus 4-5-1, 4-2-3-1 and an unusual 1-4-3-2 variant that won 1-0 at Guimarães. He also used four play styles: Attacking five times, Passing three times, and Counter and Long Ball once each. Counter was the choice for Saturday's 3-2 win at Moreira.

He tinkers a lot. In May his post in #suggestions asked for a "Delete all" button on situations, the conditional match instructions where tacticians spend their time. His one public statement of what he believes came in December 2025:

I would like the players' rating to result from a mix of 60% real-life performance and 40% performance within the SCV. This would greatly enhance the role of the manager and the interaction with agents and investors.

He wants the manager's work to show up in the numbers. At Lisboa it does: 36 wins in 51 games.

The Porto test

Lisboa have finished second, third and third, and have never won the league. Their only blemishes this season are a Cup exit on penalties at Setúbal and a 2-1 home defeat by Porto on 22 July.

At Moreira on Saturday, the Guinean striker went off injured after 25 minutes. He is out until 3 November, so he misses Porto away, then Barcelos, Arouca and M Funchal. Porto's boss SoccerversePortugal said in September that his focus was elsewhere this season:

This year I was betting on the Champions and not the league, for the first time.

Conrad Harder will lead the line instead. He has 5 goals in 16 league games, nine of them off the bench. Pedro Gonçalves has 8 goals and 5 assists, and scored twice at Moreira after the striker limped off.

SAIKARU waited eight months for this job, and he doesn't own a share of it. On Saturday at Porto he finds out whether his Lisboa side can stay top without its star striker.