Youth football | OneFootball

The Sporting under-19 team won 3-2 against Kairat to kick off this edition of the UEFA Youth League. João Gião was the coach who led the green and white team. At the end of the match, the coach analyzed the game and admitted a drop in performance from the players in the final minutes.

"We started well, we respected the opponent well and we reached 2-0, a relatively comfortable advantage. Then, the last 20, 25 minutes of the first half were not so good. We let the rhythm drop, the hunger, the desire to speed up the game and to look for the third goal. At halftime, I think we managed to inject some energy into the team and we started the second half very well", he began.

The coach said that his pupils were lucky not to concede a draw: "We had a good 20 minutes, we scored the third goal and we should have scored the fourth to kill the game. We didn't, we conceded a goal and from there we trembled when we can't tremble. We have to continue being ourselves, looking for another goal. When it's not possible to always play with quality, we have to cling to other values, such as ambition, grit or soul and Kairat had more of that than us. They could have drawn at the end of the game and I can't say it would have been unfair. In terms of quality of play, our victory is fair", he told journalists at the City of Football.

João Gião said that the final minutes of the duel should serve as a warning for future games of the green and white under-19 team: "It's a warning for all games, for all the staff and for all the players. We can't 'sleep', be it in this competition or another", he stressed.

Still, the coach highlighted that the lion team includes players from different generations: "It's never easy to bring together five or six players from each team for two days and create a team, even though at Sporting there is a common strategy. Within that, and for 70 minutes, they tried to do what we asked them and what we trained. From that point of view, nothing to say. It's also worth highlighting the debut of players in this competition, among them João Rijo, born in 2009 and still under-17", he concluded.

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