Villas-Boas sets Benfica apart from Sporting over ties with FC Porto | OneFootball

André Villas-Boas addressed FC Porto’s institutional relationship with Benfica and Sporting, taking a conciliatory tone toward the Lisbon club and a highly critical stance toward Sporting’s leadership.

“The institutional relationship with Benfica is one of great respect and dignity. There have been more excesses on my part, as FC Porto president, toward Rui Costa than the other way around. I recently even made a mea culpa.

I always try to make amends whenever I can, and I am doing so again here. There is a historic rivalry with the club that leads in the number of national league titles, not in the number of national and international football titles, because that record is ours, but one that FC Porto wants to surpass as quickly as possible. Everything that is special and involves FC Porto and Benfica is something we must uphold within that historic rivalry.

Now, that is not the case with Sporting, simply because its leadership at the moment has descended to a level of insult, slander, and victimization regarding FC Porto that we cannot tolerate. And although there is some alignment from a strategic point of view on what Portuguese football needs, the reality is that, as a result of this permanent victimization, the slander, the insults they level weekly against FC Porto, no relationship is possible, nor can there be any possible relationship.

Has FC Porto become a convenient target for Sporting’s internal management? Perhaps so, supported by a media group with greater club affinity for Sporting and which basically tries to filter and shape opinion guided by a strategic vision and a popular voice for Sporting. Everything Sporting’s president, Frederico Varandas, has done at the club has been the transformation of a recently successful club, one that is assertive and was built to become a winner.

Something it was not, because it always lived in very evident political or sporting instability. Therefore, that is a success and a credit to him. But what he cannot do is live in permanent victimization, insult, and slander toward FC Porto, which reached its peak in the case of the arena and the smell of ammonia. Sporting crossed every reasonable line.

FC Porto has already submitted all the well-supported documents to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the most likely outcome is that this case invented by Sporting will be shelved. And from that point on, FC Porto will go all in against Sporting.”

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