“Death wound”. Villas-Good compares relationships with Benfica and Sporting

André Villas-Boas, president of FC Porto, analyzed, this Friday, the different relations that currently exist with rivals Benfica and Sporting. At Cardioligy Gaia Meeting2026, the dragon leader highlighted the alignment that exists with the lions on some issues of Portuguese football, despite the fact that the “personal relationship” with Frederico Varandas is “dead. 

“ Portuguese football is a difficult battlefield, in all its splendor, and with a lot of negative animosity. FC Porto as a bastion of certain values, one of which is a defender of its region, at least so understands it and so also motivates its militancy, what is Porto, what is this region... We have a very specific framework for certain clubs, namely clubs based in Lisbon, our capital, where basically all the major institutions in the country are based,” Villas-Boas, quoted by the newspaper THE GAME. 

“ This is a first photograph. Then there's the one related to the relationship with the presidents. There is a part that is personal, that is naturally wounded of death, between different accusations of each other, where there are no relationships. And then the other one, which is related to the vision of these three for better Portuguese football. In this, in what goes within the common objectives we have, there is a more precise alignment from a strategic point of view between FC Porto and Sporting, which does not exist in the case of FC Porto and Benfica, because they have different visions for certain things, and immediately the issue of audiovisual rights, which in this case we share with Sporting and do not share with Benfica ", explained.

The case of Spain

Villas-Boas also resorted to the example of Spain, to point to the case involving Real Madrid and Barcelona. 

“Real Madrid and Barcelona are also in this limbo, of disagreement regarding one of the cases that hang over Spanish football. This can happen here too. There are strategic and there are those that are related to the sports environment, which leads to this animosity and many alerts and headlines, and so on. Internationally there is a union, a vision, the European Football Clubs walks to more than a thousand clubs members ", he stressed. 

“There is a very strong strategic alignment here, just now there was the General Assembly, in which FC Porto is present. Portuguese football also needed this alignment. Will we ever get there? It's possible, slowly, but it's possible. There is a way to make from a strategic, structural, infrastructural, product quality... There must be a common body of ideas ", warned the president of FC Porto. 

Also at Cardioligy Gaia Meeting2026, André Villas-Boas addressed other relevant issues, including the departure of FC Porto to Chelsea when he was a coach, and what went wrong at Stamford Bridge. 

“ I thought that the coach I was in FC Porto, with a structure behind it, could be that same coach and lead Chelsea players in this way, being highly disciplinarian, rigorous and letting everyone know that no one was more important than the club ", confessed.