Sporting Club de Portugal manager Ruben Amorim has admitted he made a mistake in travelling to London to meet West Ham United.
The Sporting coach has been speaking at a press conference today about his actions over the last week, which have garnered plenty of attention and criticism.
The Portuguese coach made the bold decision to fly to London to meet with West Ham about their manager’s position, with David Moyes expected to depart the London Stadium in the summer.
The bold move from the Hammers to get the coach, who at the time was the favourite for the Liverpool job, certainly raised a few eyebrows, as did his well publicised decision to fly over for the meeting.
It was later claimed his decision to do so was an attempt to force Liverpool’s hand but it’s ultimately backfired as they’ve pushed to hire Arne Slot from Feyenoord instead.
West Ham similarly appear to have changed their mind and focused on Julen Lopetegui, although he is seemingly determined to move to AC Milan.
In the meantime Amorim has returned to face the consequences of his actions at Sporting and admits today he made a mistake in acting as he did.
“So let’s get the elephant out of the room and I’ll talk about it once,” he said.
“The first thing is to say that the club was aware of my trip. It’s important and changes the context. Then, talk about the cloak of secrecy that surrounded the trip.
“I secretly parked the car outside, secretly walked past 15 people, passed people and took photographs and got on a plane to take away a little bit of this thing that was all done behind the club’s back, that didn’t happen.
“Obviously my trip was a mistake, the timing was completely wrong, it didn’t seem right at the time. It was my mistake, I have to accept it and live with it.
“It didn’t seem so bad at the time, but thinking about it later it’s very clear. I gave explanations to the players and the staff. Now it’s time to move on. Obviously I also use the public part here to apologize to the Sporting fans, the staff and, mainly, publicly to my players for the mistake I made. “
