João Brandão: Second half showed 11 Dragons with great spirit | OneFootball

João Brandão, coach of FC Porto B, praised his players for the “tremendous spirit” they showed in the second half of the Segunda Liga classic against Sporting B – the dragons came back from behind and turned the result around with two goals in four minutes at the start of the second half.

“In the 2nd half, we were 11 dragons with a tremendous spirit, understanding very well what we had to do as a team. If we want to press high and constantly challenge the ball area, we need to be 11 dragons, 11 players understanding the space and committed. That's what happened in the 2nd half. In the 1st half, we started well offensively, managing to break Sporting B's pressure on our flanks, but we were allowing them to break out of our pressure attempts because we weren't reaching with the right intensity, we weren't following the breaking movements, and when the game reached the flanks, we had to be much more aggressive. In the 2nd half, the story was different. We were extremely aggressive on the ball, even in stoppage time, with the team tired, we always managed to disrupt Sporting B's build-up, where they are extremely competent,” he began analyzing on Porto Canal.

Debut of Martim Chelmik: “This is the path and purpose of the B team. It hurts us when we don't win and when we're not in the position we want, but we have to look at Martim, at Mateus Mide last week, at Tiago Silva, who is still a junior and came in strong, and at André Miranda, who is still a junior and was crucial in many moments of the game. This is the purpose of the B team and this is the path we are taking. Last year was difficult, but we played on average with five or six juniors in the team, and now you can see these players having a different performance. João Teixeira is an example of this, his growth this year is a result of what he experienced last year. That's what we want, always with a close relationship between the A team and the under-19s.”

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