Coach Rúben Amorim thanked, this Sunday, the “incredible adventure” of almost five years he lived in Sporting and he was proud to head to the English of Manchester United as a “product of Portuguese football”.
“It was an incredible adventure. I always seemed to have all the certainty and know the path well, but I had phases with some doubts. I had a lot of people who helped me. I experienced a very difficult context when I arrived, but a very special one. This context is difficult to repeat somewhere else. It may not be possible to recreate what we had here. What I can say to the Sporting fans is thank you for this fantastic adventure”, he said, after the 4-2 victory against Sporting de Braga, in his farewell game for the club. lions’.
Winner of two championships (2020/21 and 2023/24), two editions of the League Cup (2020/21 and 2021/22) and a Super Cup (2021) for the Alvalade club, the 39-year-old coach considered that this victory Sunday, in Braga, was “an even more memorable moment” than Tuesday’s victory over Manchester City (4-1), in the Champions League.
Rúben Amorim even confessed that the turnaround in the second half is difficult to explain, as if consummated by the “spirit” of all the players he has guided at the ‘lions’ since March 2020, having given as examples the names of Coates, Luís Neto, Antunes or Matheus Nunes.
“It seems like everyone who came through here in the last four years was there. I was already champion for my favorite club [Benfica] but this result was very special, much more than on Tuesday. We all won the game together at my farewell. It had to be like this”, he stressed.
Despite the mistakes he made and the stubbornness he exhibited, Rúben Amorim says that the Sporting “has always been in first place” until Manchester United’s proposal to replace Dutchman Erik Ten Hag as coach of the ‘red devils’.
“That was the only time I thought more about myself than the team, but I felt like this was the time to follow my path. If I’m in a place, I feel like I have to be there with body and soul,” he specified.
In addition to thanking Frederico Varandas, Rúben Amorim also thanked the president of Sporting de Braga, António Salvador, and the coordinator of the Arsenalistas’ training, Hugo Vieira, for the bet to hire Ricardo Sá Pinto as coach of the Braga team in December 2019, in a three-month period that won a League Cup for the Minho people and preceded the move to Alvalade.
“I’m very proud to be a ‘product’ of Portuguese football”
Hoping that Sporting makes the best start ever in the championship in the next round, when they host Santa Clara, in the 12th round of the Portuguese First League, on November 30, and that the squad can head to Praça do Marquês de Pombal, in Lisbon , to celebrate his second championship, Rúben Amorim also expressed his appreciation for Portuguese football before moving to the ‘Premier League’.
“I’m very proud to be a ‘product’ of Portuguese football. The fact that a Benfica fan has this success at Sporting shows that Portuguese football is healthy. In the beginning, I ‘complained’ more with the referees than I do now. I’ve also evolved on this issue “, he said, in the press room of the Braga Municipal Stadium.
The coach warned, however, that one of the situations that frustrated him as a coach was the inevitability of selling players, season after season, and warned of the growing disparity in budgets between teams in the Portuguese top flight.
“Something that made me very frustrated was having to sell players. I wanted to take steps forward, because it is a limitation of our football. The budgets of small teams and big teams start to make a big difference in the championship. If we don’t all develop , we’re going to get even worse. I don’t know if Portuguese football will be ‘poorer’ with my departure.
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