«Very happy for Barreiro, my first decision when I arrived was to take him out of the team»

Bruno Lage highlights the Luxembourg midfielder’s work capacity

Bruno Lage, Benfica coach, speaking to journalists after the game with Famalicão in the 18th round of the League:

[Surpreendido com a veia goleadora de Leandro Barreiro? Trocava um golo dele por um do Pavlidis?]

“No. Barreiro’s goals were important for Barreiro and Pavlidis had a share of making moves to drag players into Barreiro’s goals.

Barreiro is interesting, because we didn’t know him. After a week/15 days of working regularly like him, he got injured. We start to feel that he is a very interesting player when arriving in the area, in these short diagonals. He’s been working a lot and when you talk about some, I’ll point it out to Barreiro. I was very happy for him. Do you know why? My first decision when I arrived was to remove Barreiro from the team. Everyone said that Barreiro couldn’t play with Tino. Four and a half months later…

Merit to the player and we are very happy for him. I wouldn’t take any goals from him to give to another player.”