Benfica win 3-0, but José Mourinho far from pleased | OneFootball

He returned to Portuguese football this week, 21 years after leaving Porto and 25 years after coaching Benfica, his first club as a manager. The Eagles defeated AFS 3-0, but the coach considered that the performance was nothing special.

The new leader of the Eagles explained that the priority was to give stability to a team coming off a difficult few days. “There were things I liked a lot. Playing practically with the same players, we managed to do different things. I told them at the end: ‘It was good, but nothing extraordinary. Hurry up, because we have training tomorrow.’”

His analysis of the match was pragmatic: a nervous first half, a solid second half: “At halftime I said we had to come out with a winning attitude, we couldn’t allow AVS to get into the game. We took advantage of the opponent’s difficult moment and ended up settling it.”

Mourinho made a point of praising the players and the spirit he found in the locker room: “The boys who were practically born at Benfica seem like brothers. It’s a brotherhood. Happy and relaxed men play better than men under pressure. I’ll try to help them with my experience, even with the atmosphere: the trip to the game was heavy, the return will be lighter,” he concluded.

Benfica will be back on the pitch next Tuesday, September 23, at 8:15 p.m., at Estádio da Luz, against Rio Ave. The match refers to the first (postponed) round of Liga Portugal Betclic and will be played against the team led by Sotiris Sylaidopoulos.

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