André Villas-Boas: “Rui Costa is a class act, he leads our biggest rival” | OneFootball

This Thursday saw the Fourth Bola Branca Conference, organized by Rádio Renascença, which brought together several public figures linked to sport. André Villas-Boas, president of FC Porto, was among the participants and spoke about Rui Costa and Frederico Varandas.

“Frederico Varandas gives me a lot of trouble; we do not like each other, we do not trust each other. Rui Costa is a gentleman of football, a decent and humane person, and he leads our biggest rival. Our biggest historic rival is Benfica and we are the club with the most titles in domestic football. Rui and I have a very close and frank relationship. I was not pleasant with him when I said he would be in Frederico Varandas’s pocket. They always want to nip at FC Porto’s heels. With Frederico, it is something personal; I cannot allow personal and family attacks. I cannot allow it. On the professional side, we share some views, especially regarding centralization. We worked for two years on the distribution and did so very well. FC Porto did not support Reinaldo Teixeira, but I congratulated him on his year in office; he did a good job on centralization. 90% of the fans are concentrated around the big three, with no disrespect to the others. That means the Portuguese giants are the driving force. We have given up money so that centralization can happen, but we cannot lose everything all at once. With all due respect, Nacional, even with matches against the big clubs, has a stadium attendance of 50%. It has an average of 2,500 fans. If Marítimo and Nacional’s proposal moves forward, we will appeal in court. There are clubs that benefit from centralization, such as Braga or Vitória. But there needs to be some awareness.”

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