Luís Filipe Vieira on Benfica TV: If I win four in a row, I want... | OneFootball

Luís Filipe Vieira was interviewed by BTV, due to his participation in the elections for the Presidency of Benfica. The former President of the Clube da Luz is among the candidates for the upcoming club elections, which will take place on October 25. Read the full interview here - with the candidate who recently criticized Rui Costa.

"The reason was to understand the situation that Benfica was going through. I felt that the path was not the right one for Benfica. And I applied very late. But I only thought about it about three months ago."

Model

"I have already been in this house, I have had a lot of success and some setbacks. The dream I have, and that all Benfiquistas have, is to return to hegemony. At this moment, I will easily identify everything with José Mourinho. We have to think about winning and about titles, as well as conquering hegemony. We have some talents who should be in the main team."

"Benfica will have to retain as much talent as possible at Benfica. There was a period when we couldn’t do that because we needed money. We were coming from a very bad period. But there is a way for us to retain as much Benfica talent as possible in the future."

"In the last year I was champion at Benfica, 2018/19, we had seven Portuguese players in the squad and four from our youth academy. I will give a lot of preference to the national market, recruitment, and our academy. The preference will always be Portuguese, some foreigners, and our academy. There is room for us to have 4 or 5 academy players in the main squad."

"We have great players in Portugal. There are one or two Portuguese players who are very appealing, I don’t know why Benfica hasn’t looked at them, maybe Sporting will. We had a great scouting department in the past. There is a general director and then a whole structure underneath. I have always invested well in those areas (scouting), even in human capital."

Remuneration

"No, I was never paid at Benfica. I won’t be now either."

Names

"I don’t think I should do that because I don’t promise, I do. People are used to that. I don’t like to delegate. The director of Benfica’s Training Center is a lawyer. There have to be people connected to football. It doesn’t make sense to talk about the football director because he’s working now. The return of Domingos Soares de Oliveira will be very important for everything we have to do in this house."

Women’s Football

"It’s an attractive sport and we can fight for a European title. We have grown a lot. I will do everything to bring Filipa Patão back to Benfica. That was something that shouldn’t have happened. We have everything, in the long term, with the players we have and with elite players we will sign, to also have the possibility to fight for a European title."

Debt

"For someone who arrived here and had nothing... It will be much easier to recover now than in the past, and it really hurt at the time. At the moment, we don’t have exact accounts of everything that’s happening at Benfica. Our president said something the other day that he shouldn’t have, saying it was all because of Covid. We paid everyone who worked at Benfica. In the last four years, Benfica had much more revenue. We have to admit when we make mistakes, when we don’t do well. If anyone suffered from Covid, it was me and my colleagues. I remember the day I received that letter from Adidas and Emirates... We had a lot of cash on hand, really. Whoever makes that kind of statement has no idea."

First decision if you win

"The first thing I will do is have a meeting with everyone. Whatever needs to be cut will be cut. There are people who won’t stay with me, considering everything that happened. No one who is my friend will ever come in here. I think it’s still Luísa (Human Resources) who hires people and so it will be. I don’t know Benfica’s accounts in depth. We will certainly have surprises. There are players who will only be accounted for in June 2026. I already have financing. Even today I read a story that we were stalling to pay Jesus. We want to be a credible club again."

Broadcasting and TV Rights

"I’ve heard that Benfica had two proposals. Giving priority to those who have always been with Benfica – and I will never negotiate with anyone else – I think I can get between 130 and 140 million euros. I know what I’m thinking and the goals I want to achieve. I’m referring to NOS, yes. From 2028, do you want me to tell you something: I’ve already told the president of the League that this won’t be solved with soft talk. Today, the main interested parties are the pirates. The main operators asked the big clubs to help fight piracy. There, Benfica will be strong and will lead the centralization process. I know how I did it in the past and a surprise may also appear. People have to respect the Benfica brand. Wherever it is. I’m from the time of negotiating shirts, before negotiating with Sagres, we were negotiating with Galp, together with FC Porto and Sporting. It was agreed among everyone that Benfica would receive 25% more. Then, we managed to negotiate with Sagres an annual contract of 4 million euros indexed, and then we had to talk to the officials of the other clubs."

Naming

"If we had moved forward at that time, the naming would have been done. We will have to return to those negotiations."

Sports

"If those are the numbers, I was surprised by the expenses we had with the sports. It’s worth reflecting on one thing: in some sports, Benfica has to have 30-40% of players from the academy. In basketball, we have to have foreign players. In volleyball, we lost our dominance. But I’m sure we won’t abandon any of them."

Stadium

"What I really have to criticize is the maintenance. Just now, entering the stadium parking lot, I cooled off a bit. We have a serious problem. We have 23,000 Red Passes on the waiting list, but the Stadium is always full. We will have a conversation with the architect who designed this stadium – we want to understand what the maximum possible is, in terms of numbers and safety. We have a serious problem, which is parking, but also in terms of services. We always have to think ahead. I have already identified two possible plots of land with 200 hectares. The members will be confronted with the proposal. We have to get back to 120,000 seats. We have space. If we had it in the past, why don’t we have it now? We need a stadium for women’s football, smaller of course. We need the Benfica Sports City project. It will be a referendum for all Benfica members. We will have to lose a lot of revenue to do this kind of work on the Stadium. But it will always be decided by the members. Seats? Whether it’s tighter or less tight... what people want is for Benfica to win."

Associativism

"They made some statutes so that there would be no electronic voting, and a good portion of Benfica members don’t vote. There is a plan and a project – and we are already working on it, someone proposed that we could reach 700 to 800 thousand members."

"Wherever I have to defend Benfica, I will defend it. I won’t allow anyone to kick Benfica in the head anymore. It seems that everyone saw what was happening. If I hadn’t spoken up, maybe that penalty for Braga wouldn’t have been called and we would have lost the game."

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