Tiago Pinto says that “Portuguese football continues to be one of the main showcases”

Roma’s sporting director, Tiago Pinto, said that “Portuguese football continues to be one of the main showcases of European football”, on the sidelines of the Thinking Football conference, an event organized by the League of clubs.

The manager referred that, “once again in the past market, it was demonstrated that Portuguese players, or those who play in Portugal, are still in fashion, because many players leave and go to big clubs and assert themselves, as happened with Darwin or Vitinha and Fábio Vieira himself”.

“Portuguese football continues to be one of the main showcases of European football and this is also the responsibility of the clubs, the Federation and the League”, he said.

Asked about the main difficulties they encountered in imposing their ideas on Roma, Tiago Pinto highlighted the role of coach José Mourinho in this process.

“When the club was bought it was within a difficult reality, as it was within a group of teams under UEFA financial fair play rules. That is why in the last two years what we have been doing is restructuring”, he said.

That guarantee forced them to suffer “to reduce the salary mass a lot and at the same time improve the quality of the team”.

“We invested a lot in training and Mourinho’s role has been fundamental for that, and I don’t need to say anything more about that”, he stressed.

Tiago Pinto also guaranteed that Cristiano Ronaldo was never a chance to strengthen Roma, despite the rumors, saying that they would always be talking about the market in Italy “it bores him a little”.

“We talk every day, here in Portugal we are better because we only talk when the market opens, but the truth is that this was never a possibility. There was never any basis, but in Italy we talk every day about three different players, It is normal because we are Portuguese and he is Portuguese, but that, I repeat, was never founded”, he stressed.

FC Porto and Sporting de Braga will face Italian teams in European competitions, with the dragons playing with Inter in the Champions League and Braga against Fiorentina in the Europa Conference League.

“To FC Porto and Sérgio Conceição I cannot give any advice, because if my memory serves me correctly, Sérgio Conceição always eliminated the Italian teams, so he has to give me advice”, he said.

Regarding Fiorentina, Tiago Pinto considers that “it is a strong team, which is having more difficulties this year due to the fact that they always play on Thursdays in Europe and on Sundays in the championship”.

“It’s not easy to play every three days and in a league as competitive as the Italian one. In that respect it’s a little different than in Portugal because there’s more risk of losing points with the teams at the bottom of the table. this impact of playing in Europe and it is administratively difficult. Fiorentina has been going through these difficulties, but I think that in both cases, either Sporting de Braga or FC Porto, they will have their chances of passing the tie”, he concluded.