Essay
Topics
Sérgio Conceição made this Thursday’s preview to Estrela da Amadora-FC Porto, of the fifth round of the I Liga. The game is scheduled for 7:15 pm on Friday.
High discounts and useful game time: “The compensation that is given, in relation to the incidents of the game, namely situations involving going to the VAR, the medical team entering the field, injured players, substitutions, goal celebrations, everything that contributes to the referee being able to say that in the end you can say it’s 10, 12, 15 or 20 minutes, that’s fair. That’s what everyone was asking for, because Portugal’s playing time was one of the lowest in Europe. But there’s a very funny situation here. We, FC Porto, have an average time per game of one hundred and a few minutes, which is one of the highest, but in terms of real game time, we are the team that has the worst time. This is synonymous with something. No I’m saying that teams play against us, but in our games, everything we want, which is high pace, intensity and speed of play, is difficult. If there are 10, 15 or 20 minutes of compensation, you need to understand how many is that they are played. Because we are talking here about two things that seem antagonistic, but are associated. This is part of our culture, of wanting to win, and it is up to the referee to decide whether to play another minute in compensation, which happens during the game so that it lasts beyond 90 minutes. At the beginning of the season it has become a little more accentuated, especially due to the results we have had in the first half, because we have almost always been chasing losses, we want to speed up the game and for the game to run in a normal and natural way. It is up to each one of us, those directly involved in the game, to understand what is happening.”