Ricardo Esgaio perentory: “Gil Vicente is not a step back”

O defense returned this season to Portugal, after representing the Turks of Fatih Karagümrük, in an experience that ended with the team's demotion, and chose a club that already accompanied from a distance.

“ I don't take it as a step back. Of course the differences for other clubs where I went are great, but I am here to compete, to play and win, as in any other team ", he said, in an interview with the agency Lusa.

After passing through Sporting and Sporting Braga, in which he won several trophies, the natural side of Nazaré considers that the accumulated experience can now be useful in a different context.

“I want to help Gil grow up. I have a large baggage of the places I went and, if I can pass one or another teaching, that helps my colleagues or the club, I am completely available ", stressed.

The choice of Barcelos was not limited to the sporting aspect, ensuring that, still in Turkey, he already accompanied a club, to which he recognized his own identity.

“I was following Gil Vicente’s games. I saw a team with a very positive and aggressive idea, which played against the ‘big ones’ in the same way, without looking at faces. When a team always plays the same way, we know it has an identity ", explained.

In the minhoto emblem, the experienced 33-year-old lateral, says he found what he needed for this stage of his career, with professional and personal stability.

“Gil really is what you say. A real family. Whether inside or outside the locker room, there is a very great family spirit between ‘staff’, players, coaches and all the people of the club’, vincou.

The word family takes on particular meaning after Esgaio's first experience outside Portugal, started at 32, when he traded Sporting for Turkish football.

“ When we're used to our country, leaving for a completely different country might shock a little bit. I was 32. Was it the right time? Should I have left early? I don’t know”, reflected.

The side does not deny the experience in Turkey, which, despite the demotion, considers learning, but the distance became heavier when the woman, pregnant, returned to Portugal with the other two children.

Now, father of three children, he admits that absences become different as they grow up and seek more and more for his company, believing that this new phase in Barcelos may be more present.

“ When they start to grow we feel more and more affinity. They want to play with us, they call us and, when we are away some time, we feel that something is missing”, he recognized.

The life of football had already forced Esgaio to miss another important family moment. When the second daughter was born, she was in the service of Sporting and could not follow the birth due to a game in Tondela.

“I could not be present at the birth of my second daughter because we had a game in Tondela. After the game I started directly to the hospital, to go to my wife, luckily everything went well ", recalled.

The importance it attaches to the relationship between children is also parallel in the connection to Brother Tiago Esgaio, also a professional footballer, in Arouca, and when faced, guarantees, the rivalry ends within the four lines.

“ Everyone wants to win their game. “We’re a little bit peaked,” he said, but it’s more fun than rivalry, recognizing that parents “suffer a little more because they don’t know who to root for.”.

After a season spent between Turkey and the distance from the family, Barcelos brought him the closeness he was looking for, inside and outside of football.

“ From the first day I felt the people close. Then I met the group and the rest 'staff' and realized that this is really a real family, it was the best option ", concluded.

Esgaio has seven goals scored, in the 249 games played in the I Liga, a competition that won twice, by Sporting (2023/24 and 2024/25), in a history that still has three Cups of Portugal, two Cups of the Liga and a Cândido de Oliveira Supertaça.