{"id":787632,"date":"2026-09-30T17:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787632\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T17:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:12:09","slug":"chris-smalling-porto-in-talks-with-former-man-utd-and-england-centre-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787632\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Smalling: Porto in talks with former Man Utd and England centre-back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former Manchester United and England defender Chris Smalling is in talks with Portuguese league leaders Porto.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has been without a club since leaving Saudi Pro League outfit Al-Fayha in the summer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 36-year-old was linked with a move to Rangers but that did not materialise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, while a deal with Porto is not yet completed, negotiations are said to be at an advanced stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Porto have won all seven league games this season and already have a five-point advantage over second-placed Benfica.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Francesco Farioli&#8217;s side were beaten at home by Manchester City in their opening Champions League game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Smalling is keen to extend a 19-year professional career that began at non-league Maidstone, with the centre-back going on to play for Fulham, Manchester United &#8211; where he won five major trophies, including two Premier League titles &#8211; and Roma, where he won the Uefa Conference League under Jose Mourinho in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He also won 31 England caps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Manchester United and England defender Chris Smalling is in talks with Portuguese league leaders Porto. He has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-787632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}