To add to that drama Benfica is trying to sign some players from Sporting, their president said yesterday that they will make some crazy offers to tempt the players he went as far as to promise he´ll sign one of the players that cancelled their contracts as a revenge for what happened in 93 when Benfica was in a poor financial situation as Sporting took that chance to sign two players from them, one of them being Paulo Sousa.
Newspapers said that meetings already took place regarding Gelson and Bruno Fernandes. Bruno Fernandes was offered 4M as a signing bonus and a 2M salary.
Let me just add that our president said like 3 weeks ago that like he did with Benfica before he would not take advantage of a debilitated position by Sporting to try and get some of their players, if any of them cancelled their contract Porto would not sign them.
Yesterday Bruno de Carvalho gave a press conference saying yet again that this was a campaing to try and force him out of the club, that the players are only doing that to get released for free, he also promised that if the players backed out of their intentions (they legally have 7 days to change their minds) he would resign.
He said this because our press is saying time and time again that the players are only doing that because the president won´t leave otherwise they´d stay, it´s a last minute move because if any of them did that in writing then Sporting would have a big advantage because then they could prove that the players aren´t leaving because they don´t feel safe in the club but because they don´t want to play under that president and that is not a valid reason to resign.
Next days will continue to be very tense, newspapers are saying that Mathieu, Ruben Ribeiro and Acuña will send their letters today as well, yesterday Sporting supporters tried to force their way in the room where the president was giving the press conference and with Benfica trying to capitalize on this situation I can only see this getting worse.
so what is the just cause they claim?
That Sporting failed to provide the security measures to prevent that the attack happened in the first place, they included in their letters testimonies of former Sporting employees that proves (or at least tries to prove) that it would be impossible for 50 guys to enter the academy without being spotted/the doors closed/ the police called and nothing of that happened. They guys came running from 2kms away it´d be impossible not to see them in the security cameras and try to do something about it, even after that attacks took place cars were entering the academy with just a driver and leaving full. The press that were covering the training has that on film.
They also provide a long list of reasons including whatssapp messages and official and facebook statements from the president to them to try to prove that the president was the one that contibuted the most for the escalation of the mood of the ultras against the players that led to this. The letters of Patricio and Podence leaked and it´s a shame they are in Portuguese and are too long to translate because some of the thing that are there are surreal in a club like Sporting.