Rangers flop Fabio Cardoso has launched a stinging attack on Scottish football as he lambasted the quality of it.
The Portuguese centre-back was signed by Pedro Caixinha last season and made 18 appearances for the club. He was then shipped on this summer to Santa Clara after agreeing to mutually terminate his contract in Glasgow.
Cardoso played more than enough games last season for Rangers fans to make their minds up about him. He often struggled to do the basics at Rangers, and never coped with the physical element of Scottish football.
Yet, the centre-back has used that aspect of our nation’s game to slaughter it as he claimed the football in Scotland was poor.
Opening up on his exit to Portuguese newspaper A Bola, Cardoso criticised the game in Scotland.
“I felt that I was disrespected and it was difficult not to be playing. I wanted to feel happy, to assert myself again. Yet I didn’t play in the second half of the season which is the most important time.
“Scottish football is very physical. In my opinion, it doesn’t have as much quality as the Portuguese, with the exception of the greats like Celtic, Rangers and one or another team.
“Most teams don’t play football, it’s all based on the physical. It’s one thing to go to balls harder and to have the bad luck of injuring someone unintentionally, another thing – quite common in Scotland – is to be disloyal and mean. In that game (the Motherwell semi final) there were more injuries than mine.”
A player who just couldn’t cut it
There’ll be more than a few Rangers fans who wake up this morning and have a chuckle at these comments. Cardoso experienced plenty of good ball-playing teams in Scotland that he failed to look comfortable against.
The Motherwell semi-final was disappointing for everyone. But what it showed us was that Cardoso simply couldn’t cut it with regards to the physical element.
He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last foreigner to play poorly in Scotland and then criticise the game. It’s somehow always Scottish football’s fault when players can’t cut it here.
Rangers fans are just delighted to have moved on from the embarrassment of last season. Cardoso was a massive part of that. Now, however, the club has new first-choice centre-backs that everyone loves. Not only that, they don’t go weeping when somehow puts a powerful challenge on them.
Cardoso’s comments reek of bitterness from a player who simply wasn’t good enough to play here. His defending was lacklustre, his concentration was awful, and his strength was non-existent.
The Portuguese can criticise Scottish football all he wants. In the end, however, it was his inability to defend that cost him his chance at Ibrox.
