Five FC Porto players win the title again four years later | OneFootball

Diogo Costa, Cláudio Ramos, Zaidu and Pepê are part of the group of players who celebrated winning the national football championship again this Saturday, just as they did in 2021/22, joined by Stephen Eustáquio, despite having left the club on loan in the January transfer window.

After a three-season spell without titles, coinciding with the end of Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa’s 42-year leadership and the transition to the administration of André Villas-Boas, only four players remained from the deep squad overhaul since the last title.

Diogo Costa is the only one with three league titles for the ‘blue and whites’, as he was already part of the first team in 2019/20, although with limited involvement — three matches played, two of them after the title had already been mathematically secured, at a time when he was understudy to Argentine Agustín Marchesín.

In 2021/22, the goalkeeper was already FC Porto’s first-choice keeper and featured in 33 rounds of the last of the three league titles won by coach Sérgio Conceição.

In the 34th and final round of that season, with the title already wrapped up, Cláudio Ramos started in the lineup and also joined the list of champions, in his second year with the Porto side.

This season, coach Francesco Farioli did not need to resort to that kind of management, as Cláudio Ramos featured in the win over AVS (2-0) in the 16th round, when first-choice Diogo Costa went off injured at half-time.

Meanwhile, in 2021/22, Pepê had just arrived from Grêmio in Brazil and took on a bigger role in the second half of the season, after an adaptation period and the departures of Luis Díaz and Jesús Corona in January.

As for Zaidu, who competed with Wendell for the left-back spot, he played 24 matches, 20 of them as a starter, and scored the goal that sealed the previous title at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, in the ‘classic’ of the penultimate round, in the 90+4th minute, after an assist from Pepê.

Despite being loaned in January to Los Angeles FC of the United States, Eustáquio was also crowned champion today, as he had featured in eight matches before the move.

The Canada international had joined the ‘Dragons’ in the winter market of 2021/22 from Paços de Ferreira, still in time to make eight appearances in that campaign.

Also a champion, Zé Pedro, who played two matches for Porto this season before moving to Italian side Cagliari, was part of the squad in 2021/22, but was only used in the League Cup and therefore was not part of the previous title celebration.

So far, Farioli, who won the first trophy of his career today, has used 30 players, including Eustáquio, Zé Pedro, Karamoh and Alarcón, who have since left the squad, with goalkeeper João Costa the only member of the first team yet to make his debut.

From the B team, 18-year-old André Miranda played six minutes against Arouca (a 3-1 win) in the 24th round, while Gabriel Brás, André Oliveira and Bryan Caicedo have already been called up for the Primeira Liga, but have not played.

In addition, B team players such as Tiago Silva, Diogo Fernandes, Tiago Andrade and Gonçalo Sousa have been regular presences in first-team training and may still be called up for the final two rounds.

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