It is now nearly a year since Rui Abreu left his hometown club Paços de Ferreira to take up Rio Ave's new marketing manager post. Then, Abreu believed that he'd be embarking on a long journey in Vila de Conde and assisting Rio Ave solidify their place in the top Portuguese tier.
Instead, six months later, he quit in order to return to Paços de Ferreira, who were going through potentially the lowest point in their entire history, and run for club president.
After submitting his candidacy on the final day, Abreu was given a direct ticket to the presidency when the next option – local businessman Pedro Andrade – would not take up the role until the end of the season. Abreu won the election on March 22, 2025, with 2,176 votes, winning a mandate through to 2027.
"When I told my family and friends I was going to run, they were proud and believed in what I was proposing, but a wee bit of fear and apprehension," Abreu told 3news in an exclusive interview. "I had a stable career, a stable position, and I was performing extremely well at the club where I was.". I was willing to trade that for sleepless nights, great uncertainty, and great problems, so my life was significantly altered over the past few months. My family is extremely proud of where I stand today, on the one hand, but on the other hand, they have also ended up suffering somewhat as a result of what I am going through right now.
I go to the stadium seven days a week. Obviously, there are more and fewer, but being club president of a size like Paços, with the structure that Paços has, you have to be extremely available and dedicated to things that a president from another club won't necessarily worry about. This takes away a lot of time with my family, who miss a bit.". What I try to do is that when I am able to, when I have some time off, I spend it with my daughter, my girlfriend, and my parents…they have to deal with enough already as it is with my absence because I am the president.
Born in one of the Porto suburbs, Paços de Ferreira, Abreu used to follow Paços de Ferreira matches with his grandfather while his dad would arbitrate matches. He didn't play football, but football or basket ball, even though he became an ardent follower of watching football – i.e., Paços matches.
Upon graduating in Bachelor of Clinical and Public Health Sciences at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Abreu worked for IKEA as a translator and quality control officer prior to serving nine months as a hematology teacher and Occupational Medicine Technician for Acção Contínua.
Abreu later transitioned to health care and was a marketing assistant for luxury furniture exporter Dolaya Lda, as well as earning a Bachelor's degree in Business Communication, Organizational Communication, and Business at the Porto Institute of Accounting and Administration and a Master's degree in Marketing at the School of Economics and Management of the University of Porto.
Abreu dedicated his time to working and studying, dividing it with volunteering as a 'lider de claque' or head cheerleader for Paços, assisting with arranging travel for supporters and managing ticket complaints.
Abreu left Dolaya in 2021 to work on a full-time basis in the marketing / social media department for Paços, where he helped them attain attention for their funny, real posts and promotions. Shortly after promotion to a professional role, he witnessed Paços finishing fifth in the table and qualifying for Europe for a fourth time in the club's history. The Beavers thrashed Northern Irish side Larne before meeting Tottenham Hotspur in the UEFA Europa Conference League play-offs, beating them 1-0 before losing the return leg 3-0. Paços would eventually end up 11th in the table, before dipping back down into 17th in the table and subject to automatic relegation.
"No club drops like this without getting something wrong, of course," Abreu said. "The fact is that Paços also hurt due to the current situation and due to this transformation that Portuguese football is undergoing.".
The same season that Paços qualified for the Champions League (2013/14) was the same season that the clubs were forced to switch to either SADs or SDUQs. This had a gigantic impact on the Portuguese football environment as it allowed for more foreign investors to start arriving and more money to start flowing into Portuguese clubs. The majority of clubs in Portugal implemented the SAD system, which introduced foreign investors and foreign capital and expanded the clubs' payrolls and budgets."
"Paços never had a chance to keep this growth, because they were still an SDUQ, an old-fashioned club. Year by year, we lost our talent appeal. And one of Paços' best weapons was the recruitment of unknown players and then selling them for a record revenue.".
What we started realizing is that even those unknown players from those less-known championships, everybody started looking there and sign the deals that Paços could have signed without any problem.
It started becoming more difficult for Paços and year by year, the clubs had fewer sellable players. This started the financial downfall that pushed the club to the situation it is in now.
After a disappointing 2023/24 season in which Paços finished fifth in the second division, 12 points behind promotion, Abreu stepped down and joined top-flight side Rio Ave. However as more and more fans and season-ticket holders called for him to come back and lead the club once again, Abreu eventually heeded the call and stood for the presidential elections. He replaced Paulo Meneses, who had brought Abreu to the club during his 12-year reign, and oversaw a dramatic run-in to the season. Paços finished 16th in the standings, but they avoided relegation by the narrowest of margins after they defeated Belenenses in the promotion/relegation playoffs, Vladislav Morozov's 106th-minute goal proving to be the difference. But rather than splurging in the summer market, Abreu took a conservative path – one that limited financial risk.
"It was a messy situation, because I chose not to keep the management structure that we had with our sports director. Paços didn't have a Scouting department, so I didn't have a Shadow Team or a recruitment base or a player base.". It was from scratch, and it was pure hard work. Thanks to the wonderful help of an ex-Paços Chief Scout, who really helped us a lot in these three months during the summer window, and the technical committee, we were able to evaluate these players and set our targets. Naturally, we also had our budget constraints…many of the players whom we considered to be our targets, they signed for second-tier clubs like Farense, Acadêmica or Vizela. They were players whom we wished to sign, but we couldn't because we could not compete with the economic resources of such clubs.
"Regardless of that, we tried to maintain our concentration.". We would always dream of having a team with balanced level players for every position so we would not have this eleven starters scenario, but the other players in the team did not promise us anything. We now have a team that promises us in all departments. Okay, there would always be players who we would have wanted to sign and could not. But hey, that's all in it. It was a tough and fascinating one, but I think on the whole, for the purposes of conveying the goal, which is to build a balanced team that struggles to achieve survival, I think we've managed to build a team for that.
At 38 years old, Rui Abreu is one of the youngest club officials in international football alongside the likes of Ben Harburg and Lucy Rushton, and he's tasked with stabilizing the shipwreck that Paços de Ferreira have become. Paços are 16th in the table, only a single point above danger of relegation, and they'll be hoping to pull off a massive upset when they travel to Portuguese champions Sporting on October 18 in the Taça de Portugal.