Roberto Martinez says the Portuguese player is the best professional in European football

Coach Roberto Martinez said today that the “Portuguese player is the best professional in European football” so he considers himself lucky to have 82 players he can call up to his Quinas squad.

The 50-year-old Spanish coach attended a businessmen’s lunch at the Portuguese-Spanish Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Lisbon to talk about his experience leading the group, leaving plenty of praise for the quinas core team that qualified for Euro 2024.

“In the Federation [FPF] we have legends such as Pauleta, Hélder Postiga and João Pinto, director of the FPF. It shows the culture, it shows the past, what they really need to play for the national team. The Portuguese player is the best professional in European football. Portugal has 82 players in the world’s top league and I am lucky to be able to manage these players. My task is to prioritize the dynamics in the group because we can play defensively, attackingly and counter-attackingly,” said the Portuguese coach.

The Portuguese player’s winning mentality surprised Roberto Martinez more than anything he had ever seen before.

“The Portuguese player is competitive. This is a great asset and hard to find these days,” he noted.

He then spoke about his past with the Belgium national team, which he coached between 2016 and 2022, revealing the difficulties he faced in contrast to what he found when he entered the Portugal dressing room just over a year ago.

“I felt a special feeling [na seleção portuguesa]. It was like coming home to the Portuguese way of life, climate and hospitality. I found a federation that had been running for 12 years and had a professional structure. The FPF has the opportunity to work at the maximum level,” he said.

And he continued: “I came from Belgium, where I had to create this kind of environment to be able to work. There is a homogeneous culture in the dressing room, the same language, the same culture, and one of my responsibilities is to know where our players are. born, what are their goals to play for the national team. In Belgium, where 11 million people live, there are, for example, three languages.”

Martínez believed that “working in football is the same as working in business”, in favor of “the same goal, given that in the ‘royal’ sport ‘you cannot expect good results in the long term’.”

“The big difference between business groups and sports groups is the emotion of winning and losing a game. But you can lose and still achieve your goals. I think this will be the case for the next 50 years. [no cargo] and make decisions in favor of the company. My responsibility has always been to build winning teams and that’s how I work,” he said.

Finally, he addressed ego management when it comes to developing elite players and having to make choices, arguing on the other hand that the team is unmotivated.

“Ego is the most positive thing there can be. This means that a person feels capable and feels more capable than others. Behavior is important and creates a high performance environment. The team doesn’t motivate itself. This is wrong. a strong part, but rather a commitment,” he concluded.

At Euro 2024, Portugal, the 2016 champions, will face Turkey, the Czech Republic and the winner of Play-off Path C (Georgia, Luxembourg, Greece or Kazakhstan), debuting in the competition against the Czechs on 18 June. , in Leipzig.

After the first meeting with the Czech Republic, Portugal will face the Turks on June 22 in Dortmund before closing the group stage on June 26 in Gelsenkirchen against the opponent who wins the Path C playoffs scheduled for March.

The 2024 European Championships will take place in Germany from June 14 to July 14.