The Portugal coach, Fernando Santos, assured this Thursday that João Félix is a player of “enormous quality” who knows what is expected of him in the national team, and pointed out that the forward of the Athletic he is happy in Madrid.
“He is a player of enormous quality“I think Atlético hired him for that, nobody pays so much for a player if they don't think they have quality,” he said at a press conference prior to the friendly that the Spanish and Portuguese teams will play tomorrow at the Wanda Metropolitano de Madrid.
There he will meet “a stadium that he knows well, a hobby that he knows well, that he likes a lot …”. “From what I know he is very happy to be in Madrid “, assured the coach of the current European champion.
Regarding his performance at Atlético, Santos pointed out that “many of the best players in the world” spend one, two or three years in clubs “where things are not going so well” and then “they change clubs or in the same club they end up starting with great quality ”.
“João has been with us for a long time, I know what he can bring to the national team and he knows what people expect of him here,” he said.
“I think that better than me, Diego Simeone has already said everything he thought of the player and I tend to agree on many things with Diego.”He added.
João Félix is one of the players that the coach of the “quinas” has available against Spain, a match that believes that Portugal “can win”, although he denied that the result is a decisive factor for the European Championship.
“We cannot bear the burden that a more or less positive result is going to condition the Eurocup,” he said, noting that the meeting will serve above all to evaluate the “collective behavior” of the team in the face of the European tournament.. “Individualities do not win games”, notice.
Asked about what strategy he will use against the Red, who like to have the ball, the Portuguese coach stressed that Portugal also likes to have possession.
“We cannot say that Portugal has to win the European Championship and then say that Spain is very strong and Portugal has to play defending. Portugal has to play as it knows, with all the quality it has. Are we going to play with Spain to defend? So we can't have any ambitions, ”he reasoned.
And he insisted that it is not possible to think that Portugal “is afraid” of playing against teams like France or Germany, which are in their Eurocup group.
“That is not believing that the national team has the conditions to play face to face with Spain and with the great teams,” he said.