Lisbon: Sporting CP has appointed Joao Pereira as the first team’s head coach after Ruben Amorim ended his tenure short to join Manchester United, a move that materialised on Monday.
The 40-year old retired from his playing days in 2021 and has been working with Sporting, coaching the side’s B team.
Pereira certainly finds himself in an unusual situation as Sporting is currently sitting in first place in Liga Portugal that too having maintained a 100% winning streak.
In usual situations, a manager change in the middle of the season would see a new head coach come in hopes of salvaging the team and rescuing the season but Pereira’s appointment comes with expectations as nothing less than a league title in the ongoing season could be considered a failure given the team’s amazing start to the season.
After joining Sporting in 2020, Amorim ended the team’s 11-year drought and won the league in the 2020/21 season. He followed it with a second title in the 2023/24 season. The Portuguese head coach’s first game in charge of Man United will be against Ipswich Town after the November international break.
After his final game in charge of Sporting on Sunday, 4-2 win over Braga, Amorim took the time to reflect on his journey at Sporting and apologised for leaving in such circumstances.
“It’s hard to sum it up. It was an incredible adventure. I went through a very difficult situation when we arrived, but it was very special. It’s very difficult to recreate what we had here. What I can say to Sporting fans is ‘thank you’. I did what I could, I made some mistakes and was stubborn, but I always thought about the team.
It always came first and, apart from the mistake at the end of last season, this was the time I thought about myself more than the team, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do this. Thank you, sorry for this decision halfway through, but I felt that this was my time,” said Amorim in his final post-game press conference.
–IANS
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