thoughts on Mourinho?
And also rumour has it that Chelsea are after one of your defenders Mangala who has a pretty hight price tag.
I´m a fan of Mourinho. He picket up a Porto who was on his knees and in 2.5 seasons made us european champions with just some aditions from mostly players of our league. That´s one of the most impressive things I´ve seen in football. Paulo Ferreira, Nuno Valente, Maniche, amongst others were the type of players we bought, not like Chelsea who started buying everyone until they were at the top.
He was the only manager in our league that sucessfully could play the team both on 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 with ease. At that time it was amazing going to the matches, we were so confidante on the team that we already knew we were going to win, it was just a matter of time and/or by how many goals. Looking back this looks almost ridiculous to say, but that was the true such was the confidance Mourinho could transmit to the supporters.
Even when he signed for us and he was almost unknown he said "Next season we will be champions" you can´t imagine how our newspapers mocked him, kind of like the special one thing but at that time he had a lot of trophies won in the last 2 seasons.
I think he made a mistake by going to Real, otherwise his choises have been good and the results are there to prove it. Going backto Chelsea doesn´t seem that great ideia to me but we´ll see.
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About Mangala, I think it´s the first time I talk about him here, I might be wrong but he´s the most impressive CB we had since Pepe/ R. Carvalho and we are a team that always have good CBs. Aloísio, Jorge Costa, Fernando Couto, Jorge Andrade, Bruno Alves, etc...
I think that´s a statement by itself.
He´s fast, strong, dominante, an absolute beast in the air both defensively and ofensively (scored 7 goals for us! I believe almost every one of them were headers aside from this beauty) his a good tackler also and his the type of player that likes to control his surrounding, he is an old school defender hard and mean, that´s the best way to put it I guess.
He was given his first chances as a LB in the beggining of the season because A. Sandro was out because he was playing for Brazil and then given a bit more vacations. He was very impressive there but when A. Sandro came back he was benched, Maicon and Otamendi were the 1st options for the center. When Maicon was out injured he never lost his place anymore, he was that great, even when Maicon returned he wasn´t able to gain the spot back. A. Sandro was tired and injured a couple of matches and Mangala would play as CB, switched to LB when needed eforthless. I really like the guy. The best CB in Portugal now is Garay but Mangala for me it´s the 2nd, and only 22 which is quite young for a CB, at that age both Pepe and R. Carvalho weren´t that good. Hopefully he continues to improve with us and becomes a world class player.
His weakenesses are his mentality, at first he was very hard on the tackles and got booked too often, but even there he improved a lot during the season, he seems way more calm and confident now. He needs to sort his passing as well and some lacks of concentration that he makes during marking from time to time. He´s still young and has plenty of time to fix that.
Newspapers say that Chelsea offers 35M for him but I believe it when I see it, it´s way too much.
O calcanhar do Madjer :excitedeyes:
I was only one then but I watched that match several time on the old VHS that my dad recorded that match when I was teenager. At that time I thought it was impossible to see Porto winning the Champions league again, or any trophy on the foreign competitions for that matter, I was lucky enough to watch 4 titles after that
Looking by your flag I see that the question means a lot for you so I´ll add some more. I grew up watching football with my dad, he had an anual seat at the old estádio das Antas with his brother. When his brother passed away he continue to pay the fee and after some years he passed the spot to me. We still go to see matches everytime we can, and we both still have our season tickets with spots next to each other, now in the new and modern estádio do dragão. My father says the only players in his life that made him go to the stadium just to watch them, even if the match wasn´t promissing or anything, were Madjer and Futre. I believe this says a lot of what he was for us.
Our president always mentions that shot as the key moment/match that Porto became a big team in Europe. It´s really important for us portistas.
Now when a player scores a goal with his heel it´s not a great goal, it´s a "calcanhar de Madjer".
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Sorry for the long replies, and I thought I only did this when I wrote in portuguese