Refereeing, first half and Porto's path: Rui Borges after AVS v Sporting | OneFootball

After Sporting’s draw with AVS SAD (1-1), in a match valid for the 31st round of the Liga Portugal Betclic, Rui Borges spoke to journalists at a press conference, where he analyzed the performance. The coach was asked about the controversial refereeing in the match and whether he is throwing in the towel. See everything he said.

Confidence in Rafael Nel and analysis

"I’m not going to talk about individuals, but about the team. We played a reasonably good game to come away with the win. Several scoring chances. We lacked accuracy in front of goal. AVS ended up being fortunate in a situation that happens more and more in football, and we came away harmed by it. There’s not much to do. We have to understand that we weren’t able to finish the chances we had and we were punished for it"

Refereeing

"It’s the green mantle at work. Simple..."

Are you throwing in the towel?

"I’m not throwing in the towel, but one thing is certain: we no longer depend on ourselves for second place, not even that. It’s as simple as that. We have to focus on what we need to do to reach second place. There’s no point thinking about it... clearly FC Porto now has an easier path to winning the title, and all that remains for us is to stay here and be serious until the end and do our part so that, in the end, we can at least achieve the objective of second place"

What explains this outcome

"We’ve had many highly demanding matches. The overload is there. Today it was impossible not to make changes to the team, clearly impossible, even because of what we had been discussing with the players and the feedback they gave us. It was impossible not to manage things that way. The matches have been extremely demanding. They have given everything, the team gave everything ... we weren’t able to win the game. We knew we would pay for it in some way. We believed that with the will and commitment of the group we would be able to overcome it. We’ve had two disappointing league results, partly because of that. At this stage, when it was necessary to have the squad at full strength, we had some absences. I’m proud of what they’ve done. Unable to give any more, they gave everything for the team. Of course they’re not like they were at the beginning, but they are focused and committed"

Was there a lack of variation in the first half?

"You analyzed it well. In the first half our switching of play was very slow. AVS was sitting very deep. We actually started well, but the game became flatter and we got drawn into that slower passing game. The ball had to move faster. The idea of bringing Debast more into the middle, pulling Gio [Kochorashvili] a little more to the left... they had some difficulty with that, and Tunde was often positioning himself ahead of the full-back to create overloads on the left. That’s what happened in the second half. On the right, with our movement, we tried to speed things up more with Geny coming on, to give us more freshness. We managed it, we created chances, but we didn’t finish them. That’s basically it"

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