LISBON — When 50 masked men jogged into the training camp of Sporting Clube de Portugal, throwing flares into changing rooms and beating star footballers with bars and belts, the response from the club’s president was uncharacteristically restrained.

“This was annoying,” Bruno de Carvalho told the club’s TV channel. “Crime is part of daily life nowadays.”

The man often dubbed the Donald Trump of Portuguese football is renowned for more flamboyant verbiage.

“They call me a populist, they say I’m an unethical demagogue. Well I’ll tell them something … if you’re not with Sporting, you’re all shitheads,” he told cheering club members in March last year.

That was after they’d reelected him with 86 percent support.

“This could be a cautionary tale … it shows Portugal that we are not a country immune to populism” — Miguel Poiares Maduro, former advocate general of the ECJ

Now De Carvalho is fighting for his survival at a club mired in a crisis, which has dominated headlines in this football-obsessed land for weeks — and continues to soak up media coverage even as Portugal plays at the World Cup.

In a country that’s largely escaped the global surge of rabble-rousing politics, De Carvalho’s rise — and possible fall — is seen as a cautionary tale on the dangers of populism.

Five years after he burst on the scene with a promise to make Sporting great again, the club is bitterly divided and facing warnings of bankruptcy. The star coach and top players have fled, including four members of Portugal’s World Cup squad.

Sporting looks as far as ever from recapturing its mid-20th century glory days.

“This could be a cautionary tale, but it’s also a warning sign for Portugal … it shows Portugal that we are not a country immune to populism,” says Miguel Poiares Maduro, a minister in the last Portuguese government and former advocate general of the European Court of Justice.

“Populists start out presenting themselves as representatives of the people against the elite. Then they make a claim for absolute power to fight the conspiracies of those elites. That’s exactly what we saw at Sporting,” adds Poiares Maduro, a prominent sportinguista on a mission to “restore legality” to the club after De Carvalho’s reign.

Critics say De Carvalho bears at least moral responsibility for last month’s attack on players by a radical group of Sporting supporters, some of whom have been charged with terrorist offences.

He’s blamed for whipping fan fury with his criticism of underperforming players, whom he notably denounced as “spoiled, sulky kids” following a defeat to Spanish powerhouse Atlético Madrid in April.

Opponents hope they can oust the self-proclaimed “president-fan” at an emergency assembly open to the club’s over 160,000 members this Saturday, June 23.

De Carvalho shows no intention of going quietly.

“They provoked a violent attitude among the public toward the players” — Rodrigo Battaglia, Argentine midfielder

He claims he’s the victim of a plot by "traitors," "rejects," “rats" and "cowards" within the Sporting establishment.

After courts overturned his efforts to prevent the assembly taking place, he’s appealing for a massive turnout of rank-and-file supporters to keep him in place. Pre-emptively, he disputes the legitimacy of the vote planned against him.

'Violent attitude'

There’s a familiar ring to De Carvalho’s rise to power for anybody following politics.

He fed on deep frustration among fans who for decades have watched Sporting’s arch-rivals Benfica and FC Porto establish a stranglehold on the Portuguese game.

Sporting won the Portuguese championship 16 times in the 42 years up to 1982. Since then, they’ve won just twice, the last time in 2002. That’s despite a world-renowned youth program that has nurtured some of the game’s greatest recent talents such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Luís Figo and Paulo Futre.

De Carvalho used the language of the terraces to blame ineptitude among the silver-haired grandees of Sporting’s old guard for the lack of success.

He mobilized his Facebook account to expound conspiracy theories that hinted at dark goings-on manipulated by the long-established leaders of Benfica and Porto.

First elected in 2013, De Carvalho won adulation from fans two years later when he poached coach Jorge Jesus from Lisbon rival Benfica, the club Jesus had led to back-to-back Primeira Liga titles.

Fans reveled in his blunt language. When a British newspaper highlighted the Trump comparisons last year, De Carvalho replied: “I’m not blond and my wife’s better looking.”

Rank-and-file support allowed De Carvalho to consolidate power, altering club statutes to boost presidential control in what opponents decried as an unconstitutional power grab.

Recent events, however, have shaken his power base.

De Carvalho was greeted with chants of cabrão — a word meaning large male goat, which is a serious insult in the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking world — from the stadium during a game in April after he’d threatened to suspend the entire first team squad.

Since then, his standing has been further jolted by the departure of coach Jesus. Once hailed as a saviour, Jesus failed to turn around the team’s fortunes and this month decamped to Saudi Arabia to take up a job with Al-Hilal for a reported €7 million a year.

A player exodus has cost the club its star performers. They claimed treatment by club leadership before, during and after the physical attack gives them just cause for breaking their contracts.

“They provoked a violent attitude among the public toward the players,” wrote Argentine midfielder Rodrigo Battaglia, one of nine players who have rescinded their contracts.

“We all feared for our lives,” said a resignation letter from Portugal’s goalkeeper Rui Patricio, who on Monday joined Wolverhampton Wanderers in the English Premier League.

The player flight is estimated to cost Sporting well over €100 million in lost transfer fees.

Two Portugals

Politicians called the violence against the players a national disgrace.

“Right now, I’m very annoyed by the image of Portugal that’s being spread around the world,” said President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa after the attack on Sporting’s stars. “We can’t have two Portugals — one with democracy and the state of law and another on the margins of legal, democratic rule. It’s time to stop this.”

The damage done to the image of the Portuguese game came just two years after its greatest moment: when Cristiano Ronaldo led the national team to victory at the European Championship, triggering a wave of euphoria that symbolised a turnaround in the country’s mood following years of economic recession.

“Football is not capable of reforming itself … any real change to the system will need to be imposed from outside" — Miguel Poiares Maduro

The level of outrage may mean that the De Carvalho era will soon be over.

“The overwhelming majority of the members of Sporting want him to go,” Poiares Maduro told POLITICO.

Yet De Carvalho is far from bearing sole responsibility for a deep malaise in Portuguese football.

Allegations swirl of financial irregularities, match-fixing and other misdeeds involving all three big clubs, with a number of police investigations underway.

As with many populist politicians, De Carvalho was able to tap into frustration based on genuine concerns about establishment shenanigans.

“Political power likes football and believes it can win votes through complicity with malpractice,” Helena Garrido, a leading economic commentator wrote last week in the newspaper Observador. “If Benfica and Sporting are still able to carry on like this, it’s due in a large part to the banks, the political powers and even the judiciary.”

Many are hoping the gravity of the Sporting crisis will bring a clean-up.

Poiares Maduro left a position as chairman of FIFA’s governance committee last year, claiming football’s world body “is not prepared to accept independent supervision.” He said the problems in Portugal are symptomatic of deep-rooted problems with the global game.

“Portugal is just an example of the problem of the concentration of power within football,” he said. Genuine improvements at a national or international level will need outside intervention, he added.

“Football is not capable of reforming itself … any real change to the system will need to be imposed from outside.”