Ricardo Sousa: youth success “is FC Porto’s, but mostly Villas-Boas’s” | OneFootball

FC Porto wrote another golden page in its history by achieving a third clean sweep in the youth ranks, adding the national Under-19, Under-17 and Under-15 titles to the first team’s Betclic League triumph. “Forever the Year of the Dragon,” as André Villas-Boas called it, highlighting the significance of an achievement that had only happened at the club before in 1985/86 and 1997/98.

It was precisely with one of the Under-19 champions from 1997/98 that Record spoke on Monday afternoon. Already in Romania, preparing for the season with Petrolul Ploiesti, the team he will manage, 47-year-old Ricardo Sousa looked back on that memorable year, but before that he highlighted the most recent triumph. The former FC Porto player stressed the importance of this achievement for the present and future of the Dragons, making sure to praise the role of president André Villas-Boas.

“It is a victory for the structure that André [Villas-Boas] set out from day one. He made many difficult choices, both in the academy and in senior football, but the results are there for all to see. FC Porto has gone back to being FC Porto. The normal FC Porto is this: a winning FC Porto. Before taking charge of FC Porto, André made many promises and he is keeping every one of them, he is winning and delivering everything he said he would do. It is a victory for FC Porto, but also a very personal one for André. It is not easy to achieve what FC Porto achieved this year, but I believe it came at exactly the right time. It came at the moment FC Porto changed, and it proved that this change was the right one,” Ricardo Sousa stressed, seeing this clean sweep as yet another sign of transformation at the club and an indication that the academy’s products can be trusted without hesitation.

“It is a very important achievement, it is a sign that the club can and should start looking down again, because for some years FC Porto stopped looking down. It is a sign that it can look down, because down there there is also a lot of quality, there are kids like Vitinha, Fábio Vieira… it is with players who came from below that FC Porto can reach the top, can make money. The quality is there, there is no need to be afraid of betting on quality,” stressed the former Dragons player.

Ricardo Sousa believes that seeing academy players such as Diogo Costa, Martim Fernandes and Rodrigo Mora establish themselves in the first team carries enormous weight for the younger players. If we add to that the call-ups of André Miranda, Tiago Silva, Bernardo Lima and Tiago Andrade to the group, all of this acts as encouragement for young talents to make themselves noticed.

“At this moment, the Under-19, Under-17 and Under-15 players see that there is a real commitment, and they give their all with the aim of one day being the ones to break through. If a player is in a club’s academy, looks up, and for five years does not see a single player, regardless of his quality, titles or international caps, being given the chance to take a step forward at the club he likes, at the club he loves, then of course he becomes demotivated. On the contrary, if he looks up and realizes that trust exists, he will work better and better,” Ricardo Sousa concluded.

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