Win over Stuttgart puts Farioli in FC Porto’s European history | OneFootball

FC Porto goes into tomorrow’s match with an advantage in the tie against Stuttgart, after their 2-1 victory in Germany last week, but Francesco Farioli certainly does not intend to adopt a merely defensive approach to hold onto the draw that would be enough for the Dragons and which would entail risks the Italian coach prefers to avoid.

Therefore, an offensive FC Porto is expected from the opening whistle, looking to confirm the win—a stance that has characterized their matches at Estádio do Dragão in the Europa League, where the team has recorded home victories over Red Star, Nice, Malmö, and Rangers. Francesco Farioli wants to apply the same formula against the German side managed by Sebastien Hoeness.

If successful, the 36-year-old coach will become the first FC Porto manager to achieve five consecutive European home wins in the same season. So far, Farioli has already matched eight previous records of four straight wins, the most recent being in 2018/19, when Sérgio Conceição led the team to the Champions League quarter-finals.

Achieving a perfect run of victories is an even greater challenge, and only three managers have managed, in a European campaign with at least four home games, to reach that number of wins. The most recent example is Vítor Pereira in the 2012/13 Champions League, with successes over PSG, Dynamo Kyiv, Dinamo Zagreb, and Málaga. The other two cases date back four decades, coinciding with FC Porto’s appearances in European finals.

The first instance occurred in 1983/84, under the leadership of José Maria Pedroto, culminating in the Cup Winners’ Cup final in Basel, and the second was in 1986/87, the season when the Dragons won the European Cup in Vienna.

If they eliminate Stuttgart, FC Porto will return to the quarter-finals of a UEFA competition for the first time since 2020/21. That season, the Dragons were knocked out by Chelsea in the Champions League, in a match played in Seville due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the following season, the last tie they won was against Lazio in the Europa League play-off; after that, four eliminations followed.

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