FC Porto returns to Olival. The four novelties why Farioli despairs

Dafter enjoying a week of vacation, the main team of FC Porto has orders to present, at the end of the morning of Monday, at the Training and Sports Training Center Jorge Costa, in Olival, to give the ‘starting shot’ in the preparation work in view of the meeting of the eighth day of the I Liga, in which will have ahead the Maritime.

The trips to the Barreiros Stadium are, by tradition, complicated, having, in this particular case, the national champions in the aggravating way of preparing it with a highly depleted squad, on account of the ‘mosse’ made by the pause for international commitments, which ‘stealed’ a series of players to the Italian coach Francesco Farioli.

It is thus certain that this will not be able to count on Diogo Costa (Portugal), Jan Bednarek, Jakub Kiwior, Oskar Pietuszewski (all from Poland), Dominik Prpic (sub-21 Croatia), Victor Froholdt (Denmark), Pablo Rosario (The Dominican Republic), Inbeom Hwang (South Korea) and Santago Giménez (Mexico), which continue to serve their selections.

The dragon coach will therefore have no alternative but to resort to the young layers to compose the working group... knowing that he will still have to ‘innovate’, given that some of the footballers who are more used to working with the ‘big boys’, such as João Afonso (sub-21 Portugal), Trophim Melnichenka (Bielorusia) or Muxito Sundays (Angola) are also absent.

Farioli craves (at least) four novelties

Still, it's not all bad news. This is because Francesco Farioli has news about the physical status of players like Nehuén Pérez (muscle damage to the right thigh), Zaidu Sanusi (muscle damage to the right adductor) or Seko Fofana (muscle injury in the left adductor), which were not called to the respective selections for physical reasons.

At the start of the competitive interruption, the Argentine central defense and the Nigerian left-side were under treatment and gymnasium, while the mid-Marfinian coast had not yet received indications to leave the treatment room. The expectation is that they have taken advantage this week to expedite the resulting recovery processes.

In the last clinical bulletin made public by the structure led by André Villas-Boas, the need for Martim Fernandes be “reevaluated”, after having presented “physical complaints”, in victory over Benfica, by 3-1, this being the reason why it ended up being dismissed from the national selection of sub-21.

Everything points out that the right-side is still in the process of being given as fit to train normally, if not already this Monday, at least in the next few days, so that it is in a position to be summoned to the duel of Madeira, which has initial whistle scheduled for 18h00 (hour of Continental Portugal) of October 10, Saturday.

The remaining ‘freighters’ of the FC Porto clinical department

There is also some expectation regarding the state in which the three other ‘clients’ of the FC Porto clinical department will be, in particular, João Costa (who, during these mini-vacations, was undergoing treatment and gymnasium after undergoing arthroscopy), Vasco Sousa and André Miranda (who worked conditionally).

Before the departure with the Maritime, remember, there will be a particular meeting with the Deportivo da Corunha, in the Municipal Stadium of Riazor, at 6 p.m. on Friday, that Francesco Farioli will certainly take advantage of to measure the state in which the team is located and, potentially, to test new dynamics, for what remains of the sports season of 2026/27.