“ Supporting FC Porto led Rui Pinto to commit some acts”

“ O hacker who tried to take down Manchester City.” This is how the British television station BBC Sport refers this Saturday to Rui Pinto, after the ‘all-powerful’ English club was found guilty of having committed 114 of the 115 infractions to the Premier League’s financial regulations of which he was accused.

The publication went to the ‘roots’ of the founder of Football Leaks and spoke to some of the people who knew him best, as was the case of Mario Falcão, his former geography teacher, at Almeida Garrett High School, who recalled “a perfectly normal student”, “sympathetic, with his hair pointed and very social, but not extroverted”.

“ He had a good relationship with the teachers, even if he missed classes quite often. His father was always on top of everything, so, in the end, they passed very easily (...). Certainly, he was very good with computers. All the works he did for various disciplines were very good, when he dedicated himself to this ", he said.

Still, it was with surprise that he received the revelation that he had been responsible for the disclosure of thousands of confidential documents, involving several clubs in the world, including Benfica, rival of the ‘your’ FC Porto, who even had to answer in court for the suspicions derived therefrom.

“ We were pretty surprised. We weren't imagining that any of this could happen, that he could have problems with justice. I certainly wouldn't want him or his family to be in this situation. Perhaps it was a question of excesses of youth, of their ability with computers and perhaps of an excess of clubism ", reflected.

“ So, you know, the fact that he supports FC Porto led him to commit some acts, but he may also have felt the need for justice that young people often feel,” he added.

“ What Rui Pinto did was a criminal act”

Faced with the latest developments in the case involving Manchester City, Rui Pinto’s lawyer, Francisco Teixeira da Mota, confessed that these are “important to him, because it is very difficult to be like him, living a very difficult life, more or less hiding, because he made some revelations”.

“ He revealed many important things, namely about Manchester City, so it would be important for him to be claimed that it was useful, that something happened, because of what he did,” he said. Stefan Borson, the club’s former financial advisor, has assumed that possible punishments can put the whole age of Sheik Mansour at risk.

“ I think the consequences can be very broad for the club, and it would be very difficult for them to deal with it. Over time, clearly, there will have been some kind of resumption. I think that in many ways the Premier League is a failure anyway (...). We know that what he [Rui Pinto] did was a criminal act, and was convicted for this”, he recalled.

“ We also know that hackers of this nature try to reframe themselves as part of the defense process and providers of freedom of expression, but as soon as those documents were in the public domain, I think it is time for the authorities to act, completed, refusing to view Portuguese as “some kind of freedom warrior”.