Ball – “I will write a free kick and the title will be … the missing goal” (handball)

Paulo Jorge Pereira did not hide some of his grief over the defeat to Japan and the subsequent elimination of Portugal in the Olympic Handball Championship. The Mukhtar was somewhat critical of the way the Portuguese engagement was prepared.

“No frustration, I feel a little sad. I’ve said it before as a joke, but one of my goals is to write a book in a few years and the title will be the missing target. As you know in Portugal, sports don’t matter much. We organize a little to compete with teams at the highest level, who are preparing for these competitions and what I take away from here is a sense of sadness that we feel we can do more than that, if we plan things better. If we put ourselves on their level. From the start, the issue of adjusting to the eight hour difference was missing. He who lives this knows what I say, and he who has never lived does not know. Anyone who travels only from Spain to Portugal or from Portugal to Spain does not know what this is, but we always live in a deficit and I knew from the beginning, since I saw the series, that this match against Japan at 9:00 will be a huge hurdle, and for that The reason why in that match against Sweden we did everything we could to earn at least one point. Then even this goal was missing, and by this goal we would have practically achieved it. Over the past two years we have been able to warn everyone that Portugal can perform well, but at the same time it is very difficult to compete with teams that invest a lot more than we do.”

Portugal leaves Japan without any handball medal, but the coach ensures that it is possible to perform better than they did in Tokyo, even if it is the handball team’s first participation in the Games: “We have to do much better than this. From the start he insisted. I’m always proud, but I think that as a team and as a country, we can do so much more than we do. There are many people who pass by and work hard to bring food to the table, but there are also many people who can and do not do much. Who is the? Many people. I’m speaking from a very general context, so a word of appreciation for those who make Portugal better every day, we always have to learn and improve things as individuals, we feel in the last couple of years we’ve done it for that. »