Jorge Amaral on Farioli's second year at FC Porto: “Plan B is vital” | OneFootball

One year after Francesco Farioli arrived at FC Porto, Jorge Amaral sees the coming season as a test of the team’s ability to repeat and refine. The former goalkeeper views winning back-to-back titles as the main driving force, warns that the Champions League will require a different kind of management, and points to a clear need for tactical evolution: more solutions, more nuance, more unpredictability. At its core, the idea is summed up in one sentence that runs through his entire reflection: “Having a plan B is important.”

As Farioli marks his first year in charge of FC Porto, Jorge Amaral’s analysis starts from one certainty and moves toward one demand. The Italian coach, champion in 2025/26, convinced people through the way he embraced the club’s competitive identity; now, the bar rises, not only because of what has already been achieved, but because of what will now have to be confirmed.

Asked about the motivation of a team that no longer begins the season driven by the wounded pride of the previous one, Amaral went straight to the point and rejected the idea of any competitive void. For the former goalkeeper, sustaining success is, in itself, a strong enough challenge.

“Last season, Farioli managed to capture Porto’s pride and DNA, the idea of breaking rather than bending. This year, I don’t think there can be any greater motivation than continuing that work, than winning back-to-back titles,” he said. “Then there’s the team’s development, individually and collectively. In the end, it will be about confirming everything that was done, proving that what was done was done well, was worth it, and had continuity.”

In this view, there is an idea of constant validation. Winning once can be consecration; repeating it, in Amaral’s eyes, will be the definitive proof that the path followed by Farioli has consistency and not just immediate impact.

When the subject shifted to managing the league and the Champions League, the tone became more cautious. Amaral immediately acknowledged that the competitive context is now different and that this requires a finer tuning of resources.

“I don’t believe that in the Champions League that management can be done in the same way,” he said. “Last year the main target was the league, but now FC Porto are already champions and are in the Champions League, a competition with a much higher level of difficulty and visibility, so we want to see the team at its best. For that, there will need to be a more balanced squad and then, even without rotating as radically as last year, he can change a few pieces here and there to keep the team fresh and strong on all fronts.”

The emphasis is on squad depth and balance. Without advocating a break from the previous rotation model, Amaral makes it clear that this new competitive level will demand a different kind of flexibility, less extreme and more surgical.

Even so, it was on the tactical level that his reflection gained the most depth. Faced with a team highly loyal to its model and already well studied by opponents, Amaral pointed to the value of adding alternatives without dismantling the structure that worked.

“Having a plan B is important. This team kept winning, so it rarely needed to resort to plan B because plan A worked very well,” he explained. “Farioli was very rational, he has a very well-drilled system, all the players knew what to do on the pitch, and the substitutions were always like-for-like, never to change the model. But I think it’s important for that to happen.”

The former goalkeeper also stressed that this change would not necessarily have to be a revolution.

“André Silva, for example, is a different kind of No. 9 from the ones they had, and that can help create different nuances, at least in attack. Even so, it seems to me that FC Porto’s plan B will always be a slightly different plan A.”

The wording is revealing: Amaral is not asking Farioli to move away from his core identity, but to broaden it. In other words, not a second life for the team, but different versions of the same identity, enough to keep it competitive when the pressure increases.

At the end of the analysis, the conversation moved down to the concrete matter of squad building. And there Amaral sketched out a map of needs and priorities, between missing profiles and alternatives he considers urgent.

“I’d say there is a need for a more mobile strikerա, different from André Silva and Samu, with more technical ability, able to play one-on-one, combine with teammates, and play off another strikerա. Then a left-back; as much as I like Zaidu, I think it’s urgent to find another solution,” he said. “In midfield, someone could come in for Alan Varela’s position and, above all, a player who can give Froholdt a rest, like Fofana has done since January. The wingers are in good shape, although it’s important that Borja does better than he did last season in order to be a good alternative to Pietuszewski. It’s a balanced team with quality, but good players are always welcome.”

More than structural criticism, the picture is of a squad that, in Amaral’s eyes, needs fine-tuning to respond to the increased demands. The foundation is there; what’s missing, he suggests, are the pieces that will allow Farioli to maintain the team’s identity without becoming hostage to it.

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