Player with 10 Benfica titles reveals Sporting offer: they wanted... | OneFootball

Currently at Estoril, Pizzi looked back on his spell at Benfica, recalling that he could have ended up at Sporting before arriving at the Luz. The Portugal international revealed that he spoke directly with Leonardo Jardim - who suffered a heavy defeat - then the lions' coach, but that "things didn’t move forward".

"It was one of those summers. I had an offer from Sporting, the coach was Leonardo Jardim and I spoke to him directly. He wanted me to go there and said I would be an important player," he began, speaking on the newspaper A Bola’s '90+3' videocast.

"At that time William Carvalho was starting to emerge in pre-season. I told him I had many offers, after my good season at Deportivo in Spain. Things didn’t move forward and a few days later Benfica came in," he said.

The player would later end up being loaned to Espanyol in Barcelona: "They wanted me to play one more full year in a team rather than go to Benfica and not be much of an option. They didn’t want my development to stall."

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