Vasco Botelho da Costa: FC Porto are outstanding, on another level | OneFootball

Vasco Botelho da Costa, coach of Moreirense, has already previewed the match against FC Porto for the 26th round of the Liga Betclic, scheduled for this Sunday at 8:30 pm at Estádio do Dragão.

Do these games take some of the responsibility off Moreirense? “What takes the pressure off is the enormous merit of what we have already achieved so far. Thinking a bit about my colleagues who are not yet free from that fight, obviously, we are more comfortable. And that is indeed the great peace of mind we deserve to achieve. Regarding the match, regardless of everything, it would always be a game where it is not hard to motivate the players, where there is a great desire to be present on big stages, stages where championships are decided. We look at this game with the utmost seriousness and try to do our best to give the best possible image.”

How can the absences in the squad affect Moreirense in the match against FC Porto? “If I have to talk a bit about FC Porto’s team, what impresses me is the total commitment that exists within the club, within the group, the coaching staff, players, the structure. Everyone is very focused, very connected, and you can see that in every play they contest. FC Porto starts the season with enormous pressure in the game itself, a team that presses all over the pitch. Nowadays, because it’s not easy to press for 90 minutes week after week, it’s a team that, when it needs to drop back, does so, but you can see on the players’ faces that they enjoy defending, that they enjoy locking down the goal. This brings us to a dimension of the game, which is the mental and physical dimension, where FC Porto’s team is extraordinary, it’s at a stratospheric level, the best I’ve seen since I can remember watching football. And that’s going to be our big challenge, to be able to have the competitive levels and indexes to play this game, to be able to contest the match. And that’s where the absences come in and what our daily life has been like, where we have many juniors training and obviously the intensity of training ends up dropping a bit, which is us being able to be competitive over the 90 minutes, which was also the big difficulty I think we felt last week. It’s something that we always have to look at from a positive point of view, from the perspective of opportunity, from the perspective of growth, because, as I always say, we are not a finished product. We are a process under construction, a process in evolution. For the stage of evolution we are in, I repeat, it’s fantastic what we have already achieved, fantastic. And so, we look at this as a very big challenge, it will surely be very difficult, but we also believe that at other moments, in the tactical, technical, and strategic dimensions, we will be able to have our opportunities. There are certain difficulties that we have to overcome to surpass them, but always to win, because that’s our way of being.”

How do these absences delay Moreirense’s evolution and growth within the competition? “Here it has a bit to do with how we set our goals from now on. We want to climb places in the standings, for us it’s not the same to finish 12th or 11th. We feel that in many moments we have shown quality to belong to higher positions. There’s a slightly more specific goal that we also want to achieve, which is to turn games against the teams at the top of the table into results and points. The team with fewer options may be less prepared to have more output, to have a more positive result, but on the other hand, it also gives us room for another objective, which is to have a very clear idea of the real capacity of each player in our squad. We don’t think about this project for just one season, not for a month, not even for two seasons. Miguel Silva, for now, will be in the game. Regardless of everything that has happened to us, I don’t feel that these absences are necessarily taking away our output. Even looking at last week’s game, the truth is that it was also a very specific match. I’ll take the example of Travassos, who is a player who is usually very good for 90 minutes, and the truth is that because of the characteristics of the match, all of Travassos’ high-intensity metrics, which he usually reaches over 90 minutes, he reached in the first 45. So, every game is a game. There are matches where the physical dimension is very important, as will be the case in this game, there are games where the mental dimension is also important, and in games against the big teams, obviously, the mental dimension also carries a lot of weight, but there are others where the game takes us much more to a tactical or technical dimension.”

What can Moreirense take from the first-round match for this clash with FC Porto? “It will surely be a different game, even because of the pitch dimensions. FC Porto is an easy team to decipher, very strong in what they set out to do, there is a very interesting dynamic in the way all the players, regardless of who plays, follow the coach’s idea. Because of the characteristics of their game model, FC Porto is a team that doesn’t take many risks in build-up play, keeps the build-up as closed as possible to always stay balanced, it’s a team that tries to use the long ball a lot to stretch the opponent. Surely it will be a somewhat different game in that aspect and more demanding for us to succeed in controlling FC Porto’s offensive organization. The lessons we take from the games we play against these teams are fundamentally about experience. I often say that there are moments when the big club’s shirt, by itself, already makes a difference and it seems like teams already start 1-0 down. When these games become a habit for our players, there will no longer be that anxiety, that nervousness. We are more prepared and calmer to play this game, but always with the awareness that we are talking about the league leaders. A very strong team offensively wins games, but what wins championships and standings is the defensive side, and without a doubt, FC Porto impresses a lot there and I think that’s what clearly justifies this first place.”

Can Cédric Teguia be called up? In this scenario, can you count on Fabiano Souza? “Fabiano was practically three and a half months without playing, he was a player we even expected might leave. He’s not a player who is ready yet, he’s clearly in pre-season. Of the players we have absent, Cédric is the one who is closest, but he’s still not fit to be in this game. All the others are longer-term situations, Yan will still be out for a few more games, Dinis, for now, is done for the season, Álvaro only for the last games. But regarding Fabiano, he was out for a long time, he’s been with the team, but he’s not ready yet, not yet prepared.”

Can Moreirense take advantage of the fact that FC Porto is in the middle of a European knockout tie? “No. I say it many times, and if there’s something FC Porto has proven, it’s that whoever plays, the competitiveness is there, the process is there, the competence is there, the dynamic is there. I don’t believe it will have any influence, and as if a very strong squad full of options wasn’t enough, they also have a B team that is doing a fantastic job and also has many solutions.”

When you accepted this project, did you believe you would secure survival so soon? “The coach always expects to do the best possible, but it’s not something I think about or that makes sense for me to spend much time thinking about. We’ve found here a bit of the club people’s DNA, which is that we want to have ambition, we want more. It’s a year zero, the expectation was perhaps set too high because of what we managed to do at the start of the season. Maximum ambition for what’s left, survival is no longer an issue and now the goal is to try to be as competitive as possible.”

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