The Portimonense coach said today that his team must present itself with “extra attention” during Sunday's trip to FC Porto, from the I Football League, to avoid costly mistakes.
“FC Porto has a vast group of quality athletes and we have to be alert from the moment the referee blows the whistle until the match ends. Any lack of concentration, any distraction, any wrong pass that causes a transition can penalize us significantly”, warned Paulo Sérgio, at the press conference prior to the match of the eighth round of the competition.
In this sense, he continued, his team “has to pay extra attention” when approaching the meeting with FC Porto, which, in the 20 previous visits to Portimonense for the League, had 20 victories.
“Perhaps against opponents who do not have the quality that FC Porto has, mistakes are sometimes forgiven, [but] against these teams mistakes are usually not forgiven, they make us pay dearly”, highlighted the Portimonense coach.
Paulo Sérgio prepared his team “to be very attentive” and “to try to know how to enjoy the ball” in moments of possession, but also to have “a lot of concentration on FC Porto’s maneuvers and positioning”.
“And then, don’t invent it. Play simple, play easy, play safe, because these teams in transition are very strong”, he warned, promising that Portimonense will “try everything to bring something positive out of a difficult game”.
With the Porto players coming off two consecutive defeats, against Benfica, in the League, and Barcelona, in the Champions League, Paulo Sérgio stressed that the opponent will seek to reverse this negative cycle.
“We know very well how FC Porto plays. These two games, one in which he played most of the time against 10, and a 'Champions' game in which he was not at all, on the contrary, inferior to the opponent, [only] did not obtain the [intended] result, but the quality of football and what we recognize at FC Porto is there, so these results do not influence in any way what tomorrow’s game [domingo] will be like”, he stated.
Portimonense has better production as a visitor – it is in this condition that they have recorded their two victories in the competition –, but the coach said that this has no influence on Sunday's match.
“It's a game, a story that will have to be written tomorrow and we really want to live up to that match and be able to compete against a team with the potential that FC Porto has”, he concluded.
FC Porto, third placed, with 16 points, receives Portimonense, 11th, with eight, on Sunday, at 18pm, at Estádio do Dragão, in Porto, refereed by Nuno Almeida, from the Algarve Football Association .
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