The storm that hit Porto, this Tuesday, washed away FC Porto and turned a match for the biggest club competition in the world into a nightmare. After a a European match no one will miss against Club Brugge (4-0), Sérgio Conceição stated it was “difficult to explain” a match in which the team “was not in the match” and made “many individual mistakes” that “ended in disaster”.

No explanation possible
“It’s a difficult match to explain. Looking at the data, I think we did much better in some pre-season matches without goals. There are no excuses for what we didn’t do and should have done in a Champions League match. You look at the numbers, at what is the foundation of our team, and it is inexplicable that we did four fouls until the second goal. Today we weren’t strong in what we usually are, I didn’t get the message across the players. In these five years, things have gone well most of the time, but there are matches like these, which can’t happen because we weren’t in the match.”

Double change at halftime
“We wanted to give the team another attacking capability. The match was balanced in the first-half. We conceded a penalty on a ball that Diogo (Costa) doesn’t normally put in that area because he knows it’s dangerous. He plays extremely well with his feet and not even that was good at that today, there were just too many individual mistakes. Mistakes which were exploited by Brugge, on a fantastic day for them. Those individual mistakes, coupled with what we didn’t do as a team, ended in this disaster that happened today.”

Otávio
“I had information from the medical department that he could play and I sent him into the match. I’m not part of the medical department, I’m in constant contact with the athlete and with our manager, in this case Dr Puga, and we felt he could play, even though he wasn’t in top condition, he was still able to make his contribution.”

The cost of defeat
“We have to look at this competition knowing that we are facing the best, knowing our history and knowing that year after year we have to bring youngsters into our squad. Important players keep leaving, this competition demands weight in the good sense of the word. We didn’t do well in the first two matches, we have four left to correct this. In Madrid, I think we had a very competent performance and we deserved a different result. We’ll be here. If I feel that the behaviour and attitude of the team is this, obviously we can’t represent this club.”