It’s getting serious

By: j | August 13th, 2008

Ahead of the Portuguese SuperCup (Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira) against Sporting this Saturday in beautiful southern Portugal town of Faro, Porto manager Jesualdo Ferreira has clamped down, closing practices to the media and very serious about adding the first trophy of the season to the burgeoning hardware case.

Morocco international, Tarik Sektioui is recovering smoothly from injury and worked well into practice however Rabiola is still unavailable. Lucho González although he has played a major role in the three consecutive league titles has yet to play in the Supertaça. Lucho commented, “It’s always exciting to play a final, despite everything else. It’s a first time for me and I just want to get pleasure from and win it.”

Expressing the seriousness of this match, he stated his focus is directly upon capturing “the first title of the new season”

“The recipe to win the match is to work hard and, as we’re talking about a final, our aim is to be victorious in the end. We’ll try to progress even more throughout the week so we can appear in top condition for the match.”

“Sporting is a good team and I only hope that we can make a good match and get the title as well.”

Paulo Bento’s Sporting has had a superb off-season but amongst their signings, possibly the two most important was securing the long-term future of Marat Izmailov and Leandro Grimi with the club. In his second full season with the club, Marat Izmailov, a product of Lokomotiv Moscow, is overdue to break-out and a key player to watch in the versatile Sporting attack. Certainly Dragões fans will remember his impact last year in the Cup and I’m expecting a hotly contested match through the full ninety minutes.