Mourinho hits back at Octávio Machado: Porto were poorly coached | OneFootball

José Mourinho took advantage of the press conference after Benfica's victory against Estoril on Saturday night, a match corresponding to the 17th round of the I Liga, to respond, albeit indirectly, to Octávio Machado.

A few days ago, the former coach criticized his colleague and labeled Mourinho a "nobody." From that cue, the person in charge of Benfica replied and recalled the time when he succeeded his compatriot at FC Porto.

Referring to a phrase from that period, in which Mourinho stated that "under normal conditions we will be champions and under abnormal conditions we will also be champions," the Benfica coach remembered the poor state in which he found FC Porto when he arrived in Invicta in 2003.

"It's an old phrase, in different states of maturity. More maturity, more tranquility. Less maturity, more difficult statements. When I arrived at FC Porto, I found a very poorly trained team, very weak, which had so much room for improvement, and I believed so much in my work that it wasn't even a risk to say what I said. I knew the work we were doing to improve the team the following year, and then the results confirmed it," Mourinho began by saying.

"FC Porto was very strong with me, and in those two years, it wasn't very difficult to make statements of that kind, but due to maturity and the situation, I won't say that. I will say that starting a season with a good pre-season, office work, and everyone imbued with the same spirit, I would say that next season Benfica has necessarily good chances [of being champions]," he continued.

"This year the table shows that we are third, two points behind the second and seven or ten from the first, being mathematically possible fuels us, and the fact that we haven't lost in the championship and are managing victories and some draws gives us that hope, but we do not hide that FC Porto is having an extraordinary championship and that Sporting has a great team. Having dropped points here or there doesn't make us hide that they have a great team and an excellent coach, so it's difficult for us with this Sporting and this FC Porto. As we say in the locker room, let's go for them," he concluded.

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