Porto Quotes

If I had wanted to be protected in a quiet job, I could have stayed at Porto. I would have been second, after God, in the eyes of the fans even if I had never won another thing.

The Porto players were with me for two and a half years, they believed in me, in my methods, in the way we do it. The next day I go and a manager arrives who works completely differently.

In the same way that I had to follow an Italian manager here, I can imagine that it was not easy for an Italian manager to follow me at Porto.

The most interesting - in fact, inspiring - people I met there [Porto Alegre] are those who remain nameless: representatives of the international campesino movement, the East Timorese delegation,... - the usual heroes, who disappear, unknown, apart from the consequences of their work.

To win the Champions League with Porto, you have to be tactically acute

When we got knocked out against Porto in the Champions League, I only slept two hours that night. I was not a nice person to be with after that match. I was struggling to get the result out of my system.

If I wanted to have an easy job, working with the big protection of what I have already done before, I would have stayed at Porto - beautiful blue chair, the Uefa Champions League trophy, God, and after God, me.

When I was at Porto my team also played in the UEFA Cup final against a Scottish side - but it was Celtic. I've never seen such emotional people. It was unbelievable!

Nothing like this has been attempted before. (...) It might be called a literary Porto Alegre. That implies a beginning, with much fierce argument and discussion to come. But whatever the outcome of ensuing criticisms or objections, The World Republic of Letters -- empire more than republic, as Casanova shows -- is likely to have the same sort of liberating impact at large as Said's Orientalism, with which it stands comparison.

Do you have a brother or cousin in Ivory Coast, because I don't have the money to bring you to Porto.

I am prepared. The more pressure there is, the stronger I am. In Portugal, we say the bigger the ship, the stronger the storm. Fortunately for me, I have always been in big ships. FC Porto was a very big ship in Portugal, Chelsea was also a big ship in England and Inter was a great ship in Italy. Now I'm at Real Madrid, which is considered the biggest ship on the planet.

In Brazil, even inside the same city, people from different parts dress differently. Sao Paulo, for example, is more connected to global trends and urban movements. Rio de Janeiro is more influenced by the beach, and has a sort of Cali vibe with the way people dress. Porto Alegre down in the south has a hard winter, so people have to dress to face the cold days.

I fell a bit in love with Celtic, because the atmosphere was amazing and the crowd was magnificent, the way they behaved with the Porto fans.

Globalization not only has lost its promise but it is embittering many. The forces representing human solidarity and community have no choice but to step in quickly to convince the disenchanted masses that, indeed, as the banner of World Social Forum in Porto Alegre proclaims, “Another world is possible.”