Sérgio Conceição was at the press room of Estádio Municipal de Portimão to analyse the blue and white victory for matchday 24. FC Porto beat Portimonense 2-1, in Algarve, and the coach talked of the “difficulty” of the match, which had a “slow first-half, with many stoppages”. As for the red card shown to him by referee Rui Costa, Sérgio reminded that he isn’t “one of those low profile coaches”, as he lives the game “from the bench with passion” and that these situations “happen in football”. “There is no need to fuel it. Of course I regret the situation, but it’s something that stays on the pitch”, Sérgio Conceição concluded.

The state of Portuguese football 
“It was a difficult victory. Every match until the end will be difficult. Closer to the end that becomes even more obvious. I think that the first-half was slow and had too many stoppages. We knew it would be like that, after looking at their line-up, we realised it was a team that wanted to fight a lot. We looked at their starting team, and they had only two attacking players. We saw it, but we weren’t able to break their defensive stance, until we finally did it here and there. We lacked some aggression in our passing game, and we also needed more men behind their defence. We did create one or two situations, and I can’t remember any for them. It was a fair victory for us, the match had many fouls, many stoppages, but we won. Had we lost, everyone would come saying I was coming up with excuses, but these are facts. There’s little time to play. I feel that we probably didn’t have 15 minutes of playing time in the first-half. It’s the way it is, that’s where we are in Portuguese football. We all need to think of that and improve it.”

Passionate and aware of what the match needed
“I’m not what people seem to enjoy, a low profile coach. I live this game form the bench with passion, I’m always communicating with my players. We lacked some positional intelligence and that’s what I was trying to tell them. We were able to score, so I changed what I felt we had to change, lowering Corona and sending in Francisco to the attack. I continued to make changes depending on what I saw in the match.”

The red card
“It happens to those who live football with passion, too much passion sometimes. It was nothing out of the ordinary, what happened stayed there. There’s no need to fuel it. Of course I regret the situation, but it’s something that stays on the pitch. You just hear it better now that there’s no audience. You never heard it, but there was a lot going on, in many benches.”

Pepe’s condition
“We will assess it tomorrow, when we get to Porto. There will be national duty, but this has nothing to do with that.”

Defensive Portimonense
“That’s a question for Portimonense’s coach. Football is simple. You don’t attack better because you have many forwards, and it’s exactly the same with the defence. You don’t defend better because you have more defenders. We weren’t surprised, regardless of who came here, we knew Portimonense would wait in their midfield, and that their goalkeeper would hold the ball for 20 to 30 seconds and that play direct to Beto. But we won the match and we did our job.”