"Playing for the Benfiquista Family"

PREVIEW

Potentially decisive: that's how Bruno Lage sees Benfica's match against Sporting this Saturday, May 10, for round 33 of the Liga Betclic. Playing to win, for the club and the Benfiquista family, with the unstinting support of the fans, is the team's plan for the derby.

How are you approaching this derby? What weight can the home factor have in a game that could be decisive?

What better way to promote Portuguese football and our league than by playing the game tomorrow [Saturday]... When you look at leagues like England's, France's or Germany's, the champion has already been found... And tomorrow we could have the chance to play in the title game. There's no better way to promote our football and our league. The opponent we're up against: an excellent team, with an excellent coach. Rui [Borges] has been doing a very good job all season. He'll probably be the Portuguese coach with the most games this season, given what he's done at Vitória SC and what he's doing at Sporting. We're going to face a very good team, very competent, with individual values and collective values. Looking at each player, we perfectly recognize their value. When we look at the players who play up front, like Trincão - who I know very well - Viktor [Gyökeres], Pote himself, they are national team players with enormous potential. So all in all, we're looking forward to a great game of football. We're playing a great team, and we're a great team too. Tomorrow we have the chance to challenge for the league title, and yes, I'm clearly convinced that the support of our fans is very important and decisive for the outcome.

Rui Borges recently called this “the game of the century”. I wanted to ask you first if you agree. The Sporting coach also said that, for him, this was the most important game of his career so far. Bruno Lage has already won a league title at Dragão [2018/19], he's already been a champion, he's been in the Premier League and in Brazil. Can that experience, that experience, give you any superiority over the Sporting coach for this game?

What I think is the most important game is always the next one. Individually, collectively and for the club, it's a very important game. It can be decisive, and that's how we're experiencing it. 

If Benfica are champions, does Roger Schmidt also have a share in this title? Does your continuity here at Benfica depend on this title, or rather on tomorrow's game [Saturday, May 10]?

I've been putting off some of your questions [smiles]. I'd ask you to ask that question after tomorrow's game. What's important to me is that I have a very clear idea of what I want for my future, and that's what's most important, but I'm going to give you the challenge, which is to think along with me about what the big first objective was when we got here, and I think we've achieved the two big objectives. The first was to bring the fans back to the team, to support the team, and we feel that, because what we're going to experience tomorrow would be impossible without the support and closeness that I feel the fans have with our team. Then, when we got here and looked at the league and the schedule, we wanted to be in this position. You know that I've said this many times, that the league would be decided in the last two rounds. That's why we're in this position, these first two objectives have been achieved. Now, we know... We've already won the League Cup, we're now guaranteed Champions League qualification, we've reached the last 16 of the Champions League, we're finalists in the Portuguese Cup, and I think we've managed to set our players up to play in a way that people like and who enjoy the attacking football we've talked about, with goals. I think we've also managed to bring out the best in some of our players and make them stand out. That, in a club, or in most European clubs, would be a reasonable season. At Benfica, it's not enough, and my coaching staff and I are fully aware of that. If you go to the Benfica Museum, the 18/19 title, there are two photographs there, Rui Vitória and Bruno Lage. That's what I want most, and we're going to work hard so that, in the future, there can also be two photographs there, mine and Roger's.

Going back to the home factor, Benfica need a little more than Sporting to become champions [in the match tomorrow, May 10], they need two goals or more. Could that support really be decisive? Would you like to leave a message for the Benfica fans?

Our great goal, as football professionals and being at this club, is to play for our families, and playing at this club represents that: playing for my family and playing for the Benfiquista Family. I believe that tomorrow, because of how close the fans have been to the team, the fans will be on our side. Regardless of the differences, there's only one way tomorrow, the fans know it, the team knows it, and we're going to be together, united and receiving that strong support from the stands for the 90 minutes, because that's when you're going to find a winner of the game.

Miguel, a former Benfica right-back and Portuguese international, and Álvaro Magalhães [a former player and assistant coach at the club] had the opportunity to speak to us [A Bola] this week, and they talked about how to try to stop Gyökeres. Miguel used to say that you shouldn't play in anticipation, and Álvaro Magalhães used to say that you shouldn't let Gyökeres turn towards Benfica's goal with the ball. Do you share that idea? Can you tell us how Benfica will try to stop Gyökeres?

We have a very clear idea about the strategy for tomorrow's game [May 10], and, as you can imagine, I'm not going to share it with you.

In the build-up to this match, did you take more notes from Sporting's last few games, or from the first-leg match between Benfica and Sporting? And while you're at it: is this Sporting team stronger than the one you faced in that derby?

We always look at what the teams have done in recent games. So there are always five or six games that we take care to analyze, but then there are always ideas that we can take from other games. What's important, and let's be clear, is that we know we're going to be playing a great team, who have played under Rui [Borges] in different systems. We've also had the ability to look at games in this way and strategically find good solutions for these types of games. That's what we focus on.