‘My Unbeaten Porto Season Trumps Blues’ Champions League Success’ – Tottenham Boss AVB Has Dig At Chelsea

Alan Duffy

19th, October 2012

5 Comments

By Alan Duffy

There’s nothing like a little bitchy comment to brighten up one’s day, and ahead of this weekend’s London derby between Chelsea and Spurs, former Blues boss Andre Villas-Boas has had a pop at Chelsea and their Champions League success last season.

When asked about his former club’s Euro glory last May, the quirky Portuguese tactician pointed to his own unbeaten title-winning success with Porto in 2010/11, saying:

“Winning any league is extremely difficult but going through it unbeaten is also extremely difficult.

“Which is more difficult — winning the Champions League or remaining unbeaten in the league…..? Remaining unbeaten in the league.”

And with that he raised an eyebrow camply, clicked his fingers and sashayed out of the room. Well, he didn’t, but he should have.

Anyway, one imagines AVB is still a little bit raw from his Stamford Bridge ordeal as I’m not quite sure if staying unbeaten in the Primeira Liga, which is dominated by a handful of sides, really does equate to winning Europe’s biggest prize. Still, there you go. Expect mucho uproar from Chelsea fans over this!

Posted in Chelsea, Managers, Tottenham Hotspur

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5 Comments

  1. Kenneth Wade says:

    WTF….even WATP is getting in on the anti-AVB media crusade?

    Please click on below link to gather all the facts related to the press conference and the context of the reply.

    http://www.football365.com/mediawatch/8178812/Mediawatch

  2. Dan A says:

    Agree with Kenneth, very poor pies your normally better than this! No where in the full article does he say his achievement with Porto was better than Chelsea’s champs league win. Please re print with more refrences to his beautiful hair and dashing good looks, thank you

  3. Kenneth Wade says:

    (i repost in full football365’s well written rebuttal here anyway)

    Occasionally, Mediawatch is drawn into the trap of believing that broadsheet newspapers are above the sort of sensationalist tricks that the tabloids use to draw in readers. They’re broadsheets, right? They don’t do that sort of thing, do they?

    Well, it turns out we were wrong. Utterly wrong. Wrong diddly-wrong-wrong-wrong.

    The Daily Telegraph this morning reports from Andre Villas-Boas’s press conference, and tells us that the handsome croaker ‘goaded’ Chelsea, by saying his unbeaten season at Porto was harder than winning the Champions League.

    Villas-Boas said: “Going through it unbeaten is extremely difficult. The achievement that Arsenal did was remarkable and outstanding and probably won’t be repeated in the modern game as it happened in Porto with me. There were games where we lived on the limit and Arsenal did the same. It will be something extremely difficult to go past.”

    Scribe Jeremy Wilson then writes: ‘Ostensibly, Villas-Boas’s answer made perfect sense. There is a winner of the Champions League every year but it is rare for any club in Europe to complete a league season unbeaten.

    ‘The context of his comments yesterday, however, was an entire press conference that had been dominated by the theme of Chelsea and his sacking eight months ago. It was difficult, then, to escape the suspicion that his point about an “invincible” season may have been aimed Di Matteo or perhaps even Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner.’

    Sigh. A small confession – we cut a bit out of that quote from AVB. Right at the start, he said: “Remaining unbeaten in the league.” We did that because it would indicate that Villas-Boas was answering a question, put to him by the journalists present.

    So, far from this being a pre-meditated dig, a way to get under the skin of his old boss and colleagues, it was in fact Villas-Boas honestly responding to a journalist. On the contrary, Mr Wilson, it is not difficult at all to ‘escape the suspicion’ that AVB was having a pop, and much easier to believe that he was expressing an opinion that you acknowledged made ‘perfect sense’.

    In addition, please stop referring to ‘an entire press conference that had been dominated by the theme of Chelsea and his sacking’ in the abstract, then use it as a stick to beat Villas-Boas with, because by ‘dominated by the theme’ you mean ‘all the questions were about…’ a theme constructed by the assembled press in the hope that he would have a go at Chelsea, and when he didn’t, they made out he did anyway.

    So well done chaps, you’ve done well. Take the rest of the day off.

  4. sloth says:

    When he’s talking about what Arsenal and Porto did, does he not realize Juventus won Serie A unbeaten last season?

  5. sloth says:

    When he’s talking about what Arsenal and Porto did, does he not realize Juventus won Serie A unbeaten last season? Say what you will about the falling standard of Italian football, it’s still a cut above Portugal, and the quality of the Juventus side was proven when Italy went to the finals at Euro.

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