José Boto says selling players is not Flamengo’s aim | OneFootball

José Boto has said selling players is not Flamengo’s objective. According to Coluna Do Fla, he set out the stance at the Portugal Football Summit in Oeiras, near Lisbon.

He said the club buy for performance and that the motto is to win. With a highly competitive squad, he added, they can now plan for the medium term.

His comments came days after the league approved a gradual reduction of foreign players allowed per matchday in the Brasileirão, falling from nine in 2026 to five from 2030. Flamengo voted against, alongside Bahia and Londrina, though the proposal passed with support from most Série A and Série B clubs.

Boto said a sporting director’s job goes beyond transfer windows, involving daily management of multidisciplinary teams to serve the football side and performance targets. At Flamengo, he said anything short of winning is a poor result.

He described his relationship with president BAP as very positive. He and Luiz Eduardo Baptista will keep to their strategy, regardless of YouTube channels or influencers, arguing professional football should not be run by outside opinion.

The 58-year-old Portuguese joined Flamengo in 2025 at the invitation of Luiz Eduardo Baptista. He earlier worked as head of scouting at Benfica from 2007 to 2018, after coaching Loures and Sacavenense.

He later served as sporting director at Shakhtar Donetsk from 2018 to 2021, at PAOK from 2021 to 2023, and at NK Osijek from 2024 to 2025. The Portugal Football Summit runs for three days, drawing leading figures to discuss management, innovation, performance, technology, communication and global football’s main challenges.

Source: Coluna Do Fla

“Artificial intelligence was used to assist in creating this article based on reporting from the original source quoted.”