Inácio to Sporting vice-president: “Shove the clause where it hurts” | OneFootball

Augusto Inácio - who claimed that the Sporting elections were rigged - recalled the backstage of his departure from Sporting after the Alcochete crisis and gave a direct - and divided - assessment of Frederico Varandas' impact on the club's history, in an interview where he discussed both personal episodes and the sporting legacy of the current leadership.

The former player, coach, and director revealed that, despite having an active contract, he was not performing any duties at the club at the time of Frederico Varandas' election, four months after the Alcochete events. It was Inácio himself who took the initiative to clarify the situation. “I have a three-year contract and wasn't doing anything at Sporting. I provoke a meeting: me, Varandas, and the lawyer João Sampaio,” he recounted, in statements to the newspaper A Bola.

During that meeting, Augusto Inácio found the approach of the then newly-elected president strange. “Varandas starts talking and saying that he was at Vitória de Setúbal for nine months without getting paid. And I thought: ‘But this is Sporting, not Vitória’,” he reported.

According to Inácio, the conversation escalated when a contractual clause was invoked. “The lawyer starts talking about a clause in the contract and I shout twice and say: ‘Look, shove the clause up your backside. I just want to be paid up to the day I worked. They don't pay me anything more’,” he stated, describing the abrupt way he ended his connection with the club.

When asked about the place Frederico Varandas will occupy in the history of the Alvalade Club, Augusto Inácio was clear in separating the personal from the sporting aspect. “I cannot forget that Sporting, with him, won three championships and the fans know well the importance of this,” he emphasized.

For the former Portuguese international, sporting success is crucial in evaluating any president. “You can do a great job and turn things around financially, you can do everything, but if you are not a champion, you will never be a remarkable president,” he argued, adding that “the current president, with three championships, will go down in history, of course.”

Even so, Augusto Inácio made a point of drawing a clear distinction between the man and the leader. “I don't confuse friendships with enmities. I can speak, yes, about the man and the president,” he explained, before making one of the harshest statements of the interview: “As a man, he didn't deserve to win a single championship. Zero. None. As a president, he is doing a good job, indeed.”

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