On Friday, Portuguese newspaper Record has a two-page story on the Championship, which is about to kick off.
Despite explaining the whole tournament, their focus is mostly on Newcastle, who are said to be the most powerful club; on Wolverhampton, due to the number of Portuguese players arriving; and of course on Sheffield Wednesday, from the very sympathetic Carlos Carvalhal viewpoint.
The manager gave the newspaper one more interview, where he talks about the battle for promotion and how Wednesday are expected to do this season.
“Everyone says it will be the most disputed Championship ever, given the quality of coaches and teams. In a league of 24 teams, there are 20 who want to be promoted. There are three favourites and 17 who want to go up and have big budgets.”
“The top three are the three who were relegated, because they bring good teams, are well oriented and have that financial condition that allows them to have an extra budget of £30m: Norwich, Newcastle and Aston Villa”.
“There are teams that we don’t know if they will be good, because the owner buys them and start to sign quality players and we don’t know what they can be worth. I’d put here Fulham, who have invested heavily and whose potential we don’t know, and Wolverhampton as well, who have some quality Portuguese players and a very good coach.”
When asked if Wednesday are better than in last season, Carvalhal said: “Because of the process, more than because of the results, we show a dynamic which tends to be better. We had seven players on loan and only one came back, which was Pudil.
“We’ve had difficulties in stopping the departures. We’ve only had one return and two signings so far. We continue to have deficit in the squad. We have a good eleven but we have a good squad. We need four or five players, but we will be able to start the league well.”
Record’s article lists all the Portuguese players who have joined Championship sides this summer, and there’s also a table showing all the club’s managers and their biggest stars.
The tournament will be much more followed by the Portuguese press this season, and it will certainly result in more Championship watchers. It seems that not only the Premier League is being successful overseas.
