FC Porto joga invencibilidade em Guimarães

Acho que o porto ganhará com maior ou menor dificuldade.

Vamos á 12ª vitória!

O onze será o habitual.

Meet Portugal's Boy Genius

By GABRIELE MARCOTTI

Some
coaches get their shot with a major club at a relatively tender age (in
coaching years, anyway).

Barcelona's Pep Guardiola was 37 when he got
the gig.

European Pressphoto Agency

Porto's coach Andre Villas Boas, seen during a September press conference in Sofia, Bulgaria.

And
there are those who get a crack at the big time without ever having
played beyond amaetur level, like Aston Villa's Gerard Houllier. There's
another, smaller subset which includes those who advanced to top jobs
with little or no head-coaching experience, like Real Madrid's Jose
Mourinho when he took over at Benfica.

But the above examples are all rare. Rarer still is a guy like Porto
boss Andre Villas Boas, who falls squarely in all three categories and,
if his vertical ascent continues, could herald a change in the way clubs
recruit managers.

Mr. Villas Boas's side goes for its 12th consecutive win in a
competitive match on Monday night when it makes the short drive inland
to take on Vitoria Guimaraes. Right now, Porto is 11 for 11 in the
Portuguese League, Europa League and Portuguese SuperCup. What's more,
it has shut out the opposition in all but two games.

And it did it
despite the departure of two stalwarts – defender Bruno Alves and
midfielder Raul Meireles – over the summer.

All of this is remarkable enough until you consider that Mr. Villas
Boas is just 33 years old and, prior to this season, had just 23 league
games' worth of managerial experience, all of them at Academica Coimbra,
the provincial club which appointed him just over a year ago. When he
took charge of Academica, it was winless and dead last. By the time the
season was over, Mr. Villas Boas had guided it to respectability (11th
place in the 16-team league) and to the semifinal of the Portuguese
League Cup.

It was enough for Porto – one of the traditional Portuguese giants –
to put its eggs in Mr. Villas Boas's basket in an attempt to bounce back
from a rare season which saw it finish third, only the second time
since 2002 that it failed to win the league.

Mr. Villas Boas was still a teenager when he started working in
Porto's scouting department way back in the mid-1990s. The club was
impressed both by the breadth of his tactical understanding and his
ability to produce scouting reports players could digest easily. Yet he
may never have gone any further if, in early 2002, the club had not
turned to Mr. Mourinho, himself an unorthodox rising star of management.
Mr. Mourinho took him under his wing, making Mr. Villas Boas an
integral part of his staff, both at Porto, where he won two league
titles, the Champions League and the UEFA Cup and later during his
successful spells at Chelsea and Inter Milan. By the time he moved to
Chelsea, Mr. Villas Boas's pre-match scouting included personalized DVDs
for each player, outlining their direct opponent in the next game,
including strengths, weaknesses and tendencies.

Given Mr. Mourinho's reputation, it was quite the calling card, and
Mr. Villas Boas openly admits that it helped him land the Academica job.
But he bristles at those who consider him Luke Skywalker to Mourinho's
Yoda. Or, among his detractors, Mini Me to the self-anointed "Special
One's" Dr. Evil.

While Mr. Villas Boas employs the 4-3-3 formation Mr. Mourinho used
to such great effect at Chelsea, it's a more fluid system, with the
wingers often turning into strikers. He lacks Mr. Mourinho's charisma –
that unparalleled ability to seduce players, media and fans – and comes
across as less confrontational and self-assured. On the other hand, he
may be more tactically sophisticated and his Porto squad attacks more
than Mourinho's teams at Chelsea and Inter (the jury's still out on Real
Madrid).

It's tempting to call Mr. Villas Boas soccer's answer to Theo
Epstein, who rose from the San Diego Padres' public relations department
to become general manager of the Boston Red Sox at age 29. Both are
outsiders who brought a novel approach to understanding the sport and
landed important jobs at a young age. But the crucial difference is that
Mr. Villas Boas's role is far more hands-on, running training sessions
and making all the game-day decisions.

He's an interloper in the inner sanctum, having never played the game
at any significant level. And while he's not the first to do so, those
who came before him, like Mr. Houllier, served long apprenticeships
working their way up through the lower leagues.

Mr. Villas Boas's appointment obviously owes a lot to his mentor. But
it's also a bold move, a striking departure from the groupthink and
conventional wisdom so prevalent in soccer. You'll know whether it
worked the day you read a profile of Mr. Villas Boas that does not
mention Mr. Mourinho.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870438050457553...

Um excelente desafio em prespectiva,contra um Vitória que apenas perdeu uma vez.Já todos sabemos que vamos jogar contra 8 milhões de rivais,mas ontem o desespero mostrado por alguns foi simplesmente patético.

Com um campo pesado,a garra e a atitude podem determinar o vencedor.Como disse o nosso mister nada de relaxamentos!!!

Eu vou estar lá.......