Gabri Veiga says FC Porto are the team to beat in 2026/27 | OneFootball

Gabri Veiga opened FC Porto’s new season with an idea as simple as it is demanding: whoever wins becomes the one everyone is chasing. At the start of the squad’s work under Francesco Farioli, the Spanish midfielder pointed to the burden of defending the title, spoke about the toughness that lies ahead, and called for an even stronger bond between dressing room and stands. At the heart of his message was one competitive certainty: “We are the team everyone wants to beat.”

On the return to work, split between the Jorge Costa Training and Sports Development Centre in Olival and the Dragão Clinic in Porto, Gabri Veiga spoke like someone who knows the new season begins long before the ball starts rolling for real. At 24, the Spaniard arrived with a message of ambition and warning, at a stage when FC Porto, the reigning champions, are preparing to hit the road again under the command of Francesco Farioli.

The first strong point came when the midfielder was asked about the status with which the Dragons enter 2026/27. Far from treating their title-winning condition as a cushion, Gabri Veiga painted a picture of maximum demand, with rivals better prepared and far less room for surprise.

“We are the team to beat, our rivals will strengthen and, without a doubt, it will be a more difficult season than the last one,” he said. “I think we surprised others with the level we showed and now they know us, so it’s going to be very difficult, but we are here to honour FC Porto and to put it where it belongs, which is above everyone else,” he stressed.

There is, in these words, the stark awareness that success changes a team’s context. FC Porto no longer run under the radar and instead carry the natural burden of those who have become the benchmark, a detail that helps explain the serious tone with which the squad are approaching this fresh start.

Speaking afterwards about returning to the pitch and daily contact with the work, Gabri Veiga made it clear that the excitement of the beginning does not cancel out urgency. In his view, pre-season is not just a calendar formality, but the ground on which the competitive stamina for the months ahead is built.

“We are really eager to get back to enjoying what we love most, to playing at home again with our fans. The truth is that we have a very exciting season ahead of us and we have to start working flat out right away,” he said.

The tone combines enthusiasm with discipline, as if the pleasure of playing again goes hand in hand with the obligation to hit the ground running from day one. It is a message in keeping with a team that knows title defence cannot be improvised and that every detail of preparation matters.

The Spanish midfielder also dwelt on the early stage of the work, distinguishing the symbolic value of the medical tests from the real demands of training. There, more than the usual pre-season clichés, he left a clear clue about the kind of team FC Porto want to remain.

“The tests are not that important, but training is, because we are a team that needs to give 100%, to leave everything on the pitch, so we have to prepare well and I already know we are going to suffer a little,” he acknowledged.

That sentence contains an important part of the identity Gabri Veiga describes: intensity, commitment and the ability to cope with the workload the playing model demands. July’s suffering thus appears not as a complaint, but as a declared investment in what the season will require.

In the final part of his remarks, the Spaniard turned outward, to the stands and to the emotional relationship that often sustains a team’s performance throughout a long year. The appeal was direct, with the sense that objectives only truly take shape when the harmony between team and supporters holds firm through the toughest moments.

“Every year they are important and this year we all have to be united, team and supporters, because it is going to be a very difficult year, a very exciting one and one with many objectives ahead of us,” he concluded. “We need our fans more than ever and I am sure they will be there to give everything.”

FC Porto began pre-season with 28 players under the orders of Francesco Farioli, split between medical tests and physical work, and now continue preparations in Olival before the training camp in Burton upon Trent from 13 to 18 July. Along the way, the blue-and-white side are fine-tuning both body and message for their first official target, the Cândido de Oliveira Super Cup against Torreense. In Gabri Veiga’s words, the line has already been drawn: more difficulty, more responsibility, and the same ambition to place the club “above everyone else.”

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