League chief responds to Villas-Boas: I treat Porto like all clubs | OneFootball

The president of Liga Portugal, Reinaldo Teixeira, broke his silence late Monday morning regarding the ‘fierce’ public criticism he has received from the FC Porto counterpart, André Villas-Boas, following the controversial rescheduling of the seventh round match of the national championship against Arouca.

“Our slogan is a slogan for a League for everyone, and it is with that spirit that I will remain, until the very last day. Whoever participates as they have in our board meetings, as is the case with FC Porto, I treat with care, as I do with everyone. These are opinions. I hope that along this journey, until 2027, there will be time to see that things are not quite as they are said, but rather a bit different,” he stated during the press conference launching the final four of the 2025/26 edition of the League Cup.

The former president of the Algarve Football Association added, however, that he will give a more detailed response to the words of André Villas-Boas on Tuesday, during the Liga Portugal General Assembly.

At the heart of the controversy is the fact that the Arouca-FC Porto match was moved to 8:00 pm (Portuguese mainland time) this Monday, due to the Harvest Fair, which annually attracts thousands of people to the village of Aveiro.

“Innocuous and empty”

Reinaldo Teixeira’s statements come about 48 hours after André Villas-Boas used his opinion column in the Dragões magazine to criticize what he described as a series of “blunders in succession” by the Liga Portugal board since the start of the 2025/26 season.

The FC Porto leader warned of “the continued weakening of Portuguese football,” at a time when the country faces serious “risks” of being overtaken by Belgium in the UEFA ranking, which, according to him, “would have serious consequences for all national football,” as “only the national champion” would participate in the Champions League, “compromising fundamental financial revenues for the sustainability of the clubs.”

“What has the main person responsible for responding to this predicted decline done? Little. Very little. Does he bring answers, mobilize the clubs for a collective and organized response? No. He is innocuous and empty in his leadership of Portuguese clubs, which does not prevent the multiplication of laudatory articles and opinion columns in various sports newspapers and from his extremely well-paid executive directors,” he began writing.

“We are wrapped up in successive episodes, on the one hand, comical, on the other, in continued behaviors that make us doubt the intentions of certain participants. What we have witnessed recently is very illustrative of what I write. The ‘cases’ of the near postponement of the match with Nacional and the postponement of the match with Arouca, decisions made outside of common sense, forcing skewed and strained interpretations of the regulations, will go down in history,” he continued.

“Irresponsibilities that, besides forcing FC Porto to play three matches in a short period of time, compromise optimized preparation and the management of their efforts, whether for European competitions – in which FC Porto will try to earn points for the UEFA ranking – or for vital League matches – a FC Porto-Benfica, just by chance,” he concluded.

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