The Casa Pia manager, João Pereira, is determined to exploit the weaknesses of the blue and white team and achieve success at the Dragão; returning to a club he once represented, whose winning mentality he knows well.
Casa Pia is on a high morale: unbeaten in the last four matches and having lost only once in the last ten outings. It is the perfect moment both sportingly and psychologically to take on FC Porto, especially at the Estádio do Dragão. This mission is expected to be complicated but not impossible, as illustrated by the gansos’ boss, João Pereira, in his pre-match remarks made in Pina Manique before heading to the Invincible City.
“There are no perfect teams; FC Porto has difficulties at times. We have done our homework and we will obviously want to take advantage of this. Of course, they have also prepared and will try to exploit Casa Pia’s weaknesses, which they also have. We must focus fundamentally, we need to fight, to endure, and beyond all that, we must concentrate on a game plan that will exist, based on different moments or circumstances,” said the 32-year-old coach.
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João Pereira returns to a club where he worked for three and a half seasons, between 2014 and 2017, as an assistant coach in the youth structure, during which time he worked with several current Porto players such as João Mário and Gonçalo Borges, whom he hopes to meet and greet during Monday’s match, all while aiming to exploit the crisis the dragons are currently facing. “It is always good to reconnect with some familiar faces, players I had the opportunity to work with,” he acknowledged.
-“I belonged both to youth football and senior football, in the B team, and this fosters an empathy with the context. We know FC Porto is not in a positive phase, and I know what the atmosphere there is like. Even the under-8 coach must have the ambition to win every match because it’s a place where, as I heard there, even the walls shake. I am fully aware of the atmosphere that currently exists,” declared João Pereira, who today leads Casa Pia on his own.
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The coach promises to enter the Dragão to contest the result, pointing to the “irreverence” of youth. “This team has the irreverence of a young squad, and that is one of the advantages of having a young team in these types of matches – they seize their opportunity to gain some media attention and take advantage of the chance to showcase themselves,” he added, in a promising tone.
