Pepe admitted the responsibility of the players in the tie against Rio Ave (2-2), in Vila do Conde, a match that the Dragons were winning by two goals, but allowed the home team to tie in the final minutes. The Portuguese international apologised to the fans and reminded there are more matches to play.

No excuses for the loss of focus
“It’s hard to explain. It’s unthinkable for a team fighting to become champion to concede the goals we did.  We can’t lose focus for a minute. We had the match under control, in theory, but this is football. We have to get up now, there are three more matches to go and we have to see what happens with our rival. We, the players, are to blame. We can’t relax; we are fighting for the title and we can’t make this type of mistakes in such an important match as this is, at this point in the season.”

Waiting for the opponent to play
“It’s difficult to analyse it now, I don’t want to talk of things I mustn’t. We were on top of the match for 90 minutes, they went to our area and scored two goals. It’s hard to see our fans leave with this sadness. It’s difficult to tie like this as we were winning 2-0, in a difficult stadium, and then conceded the tie. This is a wakeup call. We can’t make mistakes like this one in the future. But this isn’t over yet. We will see what our opponent does.”

Apologies to the FC Porto fans
“Fans are what moves this club, they are the ones that make it as big as it is. We have to apologise to them. We didn’t want this, we are the first ones to not want this, but it just happens.”