After losing 5-0 in Portugal, Porto never really believed they would be able to make a comeback at Anfield. That’s the reason why the second leg was taken very lightly by the local press, who opted to take positives from the match.
And it turned out that it made quite a good story, at least for the father of midfielder Bruno Costa. The 20-year-old was still to make his professional debut for Porto, the club he’s been with since a child, and finally had a chance to start in the Liverpool game.
His father, Renato Costa, celebrated his birthday the day before, and got the trip to Liverpool as a gift from Bruno’s agent.
Renato obviously didn’t expect his son to start in such a big game, and ended up getting quite a birthday present. He told the story to Portuguese newspaper O Jogo.
“In the publications I do on social networks I usually write ‘I have a dream’, and that dream was to see my son debut for FC Porto’s first team at Estádio do Dragão, but this exceeded my expectations”, Renato Costa told O Jogo.
“He was short when he started playing, you could see that he had quality, but at that stage, because of his body, he wasn’t much noticed in relation to others. Only in the second year. Then he began to stand out in relation to the others, but far from me thinking that someday he would play in the Champions League.”
Regarding a possible tattoo to celebrate the occasion, he said: “Well, we already have one, all three of us. A tattoo with father, mother and son, that we made together and that he kisses whenever he enters the field. Who knows!”
Even though ‘Anfield is worth a tattoo’ is a bit of an exaggerated headline from O Jogo, since Renato still hasn’t decided about it, that was a pretty good story from a game without much attention.
