Official! Ex-team-mate of Veloso and Moutinho lands Sporting U17s job | OneFootball

It’s official. Sérgio Saraiva has been promoted to take charge of Sporting’s under-17 team. The coach, who led the under-16s last season, moves up a level. As a player, he had a modest career, having played for the Alvalade club’s youth ranks in 2000/01, where he shared a dressing room with names such as Miguel Veloso and João Moutinho.

The coach sees continuity in the work as an important advantage in this transition: “There is that continuity. The quality at Sporting is undeniable, it is always present, whatever the age group, and it is in fact a great asset that this Club has. In every team, in every age group, at every age, there is indeed the quality that truly represents Sporting’s values,” he told the Club’s official media.

Sérgio Saraiva also highlighted the importance of already knowing the players and the coaching staff’s working methods: “As for continuity, it is an advantage to be able to start the new season at a slightly higher level, so to speak. There is a great deal of mutual understanding. They know our methods, our way of doing things, and that allows us to ‘skip’ some stages so that we can speed up this initial process,” he explained.

However, the move to the under-17 level also represents new challenges for the Sporting coach: “Each year and each level brings with it an added challenge. The fact that they [the players] are bigger, older, and have other, more developed abilities means that the game changes; if the game changes, then training must also change, and naturally our game plan will also have to adapt to that,” he said.

Sporting’s under-17 coaching staff will also include Nuno Mota, Rodrigo Oliveira and Ruben Martinho as assistant coaches, Diogo Neves as goalkeeping coach, José Pereira in charge of physical preparation, and Diogo Carvalho as analyst. The under-19s have also unveiled a new coach.

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