André Villas-Boas: “Rui Costa is a dignified football gent at our rivals” | OneFootball

This Thursday, the Fourth Bola Branca Conference took place, organized by Rádio Renascença, bringing together several public figures linked to sport. André Villas-Boas, president of FC Porto, was among the participants and spoke about Rui Costa and Frederico Varandas.

“Frederico Varandas gives me a lot of trouble; we do not like each other, we do not trust each other. Rui Costa is a gentleman of football, a decent and humane person, and he leads our biggest rival. Our biggest historic rival is Benfica and we are the club with the most titles in Portuguese football. Rui and I have a very close and frank relationship. I was not pleasant with him when I said he would be in Frederico Varandas’ pocket. They always want to be on FC Porto’s heels. With Frederico it is personal; I cannot allow personal and family attacks. I cannot allow it. On the professional side, we share some views, especially regarding centralization. We worked for two years on the distribution and very well. FC Porto did not support Reinaldo Teixeira, but I congratulated him on his year in office; he did a good job on centralization. 90% of the fans are concentrated among the big three, with no disrespect to the others. That means the Portuguese giants are the driving force. We are putting money forward so that there can be centralization, but we cannot lose everything all at once. With all due respect, Nacional, even with matches against the big clubs, has a 50% attendance rate at the stadium. They average 2,500 fans. If the proposal from Marítimo and Nacional goes ahead, we will appeal in court. There are clubs that benefit from centralization, such as Braga or Vitória. But there needs to be awareness.”

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