Former Rui Borges teammate recalls time with Sporting boss: old warhorse | OneFootball

Rui Borges’ former teammate recalled his time with the Mirandela native, before he became Sporting’s coach

Pedro Machado remembered the days when he was teammates with Rui Borges. At a time when the current Sporting coach – who has already analyzed the draw against Braga – was still playing on the pitch, the two were teammates at Mirandela in the 2015/16 season, with the current Lions’ coach already close to retiring from playing.

“He was in the final stage of his career, but he was a good player. In football slang, he was that old warhorse, but with quality. He was the team captain, and you could already see in him that desire to, especially with us youngsters, help with instructions and some advice,” said the Al Tadhamon player in statements to the newspaper Record.

“I was already paying attention to certain things, I had some conversations with him and he always tried to help me in areas where he felt I could improve,” added Pedro Machado, who then revealed he was not surprised by Rui Borges’ arrival at the helm of Sporting.

“That didn’t surprise me, because he moved from Vitória to Sporting and I already recognized his quality. What surprised me was when he started his career at Mirandela and the path he took at Académico de Viseu. I always followed his journey and started to realize that his teams had something special,” he said.

In conclusion, Pedro Machado confessed that a possible move by Rui Borges to Sporting had already been a topic of conversation at home, thanks to his wife: “My wife is a Sporting fan and when Ruben Amorim left, we even talked about how Rui Borges would be the ideal coach because of the work he was doing at Vitória and what I knew of him as a teammate. I was very happy to see that he was indeed the one chosen.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.