Estêvão to Benfica? Portuguese official lifts the lid on the striker | OneFootball

José Boto believes that Portuguese football is losing its influence when it comes to signings in the South American market. The Flamengo sporting director recalled the time when several promising talents would head to the Primeira Liga, assuring that, in the recent past, Estêvão – who secured Chelsea’s victory over Liverpool – would have gone to Benfica.

"Portugal is one of the pioneers in this type of scouting and I am perfectly comfortable talking about it, since in 2007 we started the scouting service at Benfica. But that wasn’t all that happened. The European clubs that used to buy players from Benfica started to realize they needed to come here, directly to the source. They began coming to Brazil and signing these young players. Perhaps today, Benfica, Porto, and Sporting no longer have the possibility of bringing in those players they used to between 2007 and 2015," he told Record newspaper.

The director explains that the Portuguese clubs lost momentum and that, if that hadn’t happened, Estêvão could have been a Benfica player: "They were easy to bring over and then were resold for a lot of money. At a certain point, Real Madrid came here to get Vinícius Júnior or Rodrygo directly, Chelsea came for Estêvão, and today it’s almost impossible for a Portuguese club to sign a player of that level. If it were about 10 years ago, maybe Estêvão would have gone to Benfica instead of Chelsea".

"That has made life more difficult for Portuguese clubs, although they know how to reinvent themselves and always look for other markets with a lot of sense. Flamengo is a bit different because we try to bring in players with a bit more name recognition and already with a track record, which puts the fans a bit more at ease. It’s not easy to change that mentality, that culture, and we have to adapt to it, to the place where we work. It’s not easy to do at Flamengo what is done at Benfica or Porto, because that culture doesn’t exist here," he added.

To conclude, José Boto highlighted the difference between recruitment work in Europe and South America: "Not just here, but also at other clubs that might have a greater need to do this work because they don’t have the financial resources that Flamengo has. But that ends up not happening, as they prefer to bring in those players Brazilians call ‘medalhões’ (big names), sometimes at very high costs for the reality of those clubs, instead of doing more scouting work. There are many good players in Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia who could even compete with European clubs by bringing in these players first. Flamengo, because of its size and financial resources, doesn’t need this work as much, but it’s something we do here, with players who aren’t known and who have the possibility of becoming known at Flamengo and not at other clubs".

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