The 47th consecutive matchday for FC Porto without losing was also the 14th consecutive victory. Facing Famalicão, at Estádio do Dragão, the leaders of the championship won 3-1 and increased the distance to the second team to six points. At the end of the match, Vítor Bruno praised the “patience” of the team, that was able to “create several clear goal situations” after a “great first-half”.

A heartfelt tribute
“On behalf of the entire group, I want to leave a word and our heartfelt condolences to the family of Mr. Lima Pereira. Someone who, as the chairman said, always represented in an exemplary way, inside and outside the pitch, the values and ambitions of FC Porto. He will be forever regarded as an icon of the club”.

Two different halves and a fair result
“We knew that Famalicão, since the arrival of this coaching staff, aims at defensive organisation, and they have an almost immaculate record in the matches they’ve played so far. We knew we would find it difficult to break through their defensive organization. We realised we couldn’t rush into sealing the match right from the start, because we would risk narrowing the path to the opposing goal too much and run out of solutions. The team was very patient, they realised where there was space and managed to create several clear goal scoring situations. We scored two goals, the team never deviated from the plan we had drawn up during the week, always with a lot of talent on the pitch, and we had an excellent first-half. The second was different, with the match more divided in the first 20 minutes, which didn’t help us at all. Then we settled down again, created more opportunities to finish, scored the third goal and Famalicão ended up scoring as well. The result is entirely deserved, in a strong response from the team.”

Goal conceded will be commented by Sérgio Conceição
“Most likely. The coach is not going to reprimand anyone. We have been working on that moment in the match every week. We have been conceding goals from corner-kicks in every match. At Estoril, though that one was disallowed, at Jamor and now today. It’s something that makes us deeply sad, because we’ve work on it in detail. It’s true that we were a player short and there was some rushing. We have to analyse it and improve, it’s part of our daily job. We will continue until we are almost perfect in that moment.”

Praising the attacking performance
“We are at our strongest moment right now. The team has great quality and creates a lot of opportunities. We had five training units this week, where we could work on what we were missing. The players were brilliant, played a fantastic match and deserve the success. They realise that the moves without the ball have a high correlation with the end result. They were fantastically committed, the play for the second goal comes from an excellent reaction to losing the ball. With the ball, the team has been switching their play from the inside to the wings, always with a lot of them available to get the ball and make use of their talent.”

Six and nine points ahead of rivals
“It’s worth what it’s worth. In the next training session, we will start preparing for Marítimo. A few weeks ago, there were talks of the nearly impossible mission for Benfica to get closer to the lead. They recovered four points over Sporting in three weeks. We don’t want to lose focus with what other teams do, otherwise we’ll get sloppy at one point or another. There’s a tough match coming up, against an opponent who, last season, stole three points from us here in the fight for the title. It’s all very close, the advantage can be lost in any match.”

Mehdi Taremi, Luis Díaz and Matheus Uribe on their way to the national squads
“Yes, the squad is short. It has nothing to do with our opponents, limited by Covid situations, as we hear in the media. We have had a lot of people away this year and we adopted an approach of not limiting the players to one position only. We’re getting them to play in different situations in training so they are able to give good responses. To some people it might come as a surprise, but not to us. We know what they produce in training. We miss the players, that’s true. It’s a situation that should be reviewed soon, because these are players that are part of our squad and we are going to be missing them.”