A former Liverpool player has been speaking about his time with Ruben Amorim’s Sporting CP recently.
Ruben Amorim seems to be the favourite candidate to succeed Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool. The 39-year-old Portuguese manager has a brilliant proven track record in his five years in management so far.
It includes winning a cup with Braga, delivering a league title at Sporting CP for the first time in 19-years, and being on course to repeat that feat this season – after a sublime win over Benfica last weekend.
Based on those achievements alone, Amorim definitely deserves to be in the running for the job. Especially, when you consider he’s only been in management for five years, and he is still very much learning his trade.
But while he has developed an excellent reputation in Portugal, there was one former Liverpool player who struggled under him over the last few years.
What Tiago Ilori has said about his time at Sporting CP under Ruben Amorim
Tiago Ilori was a squad player at Sporting CP when Ruben Amorim arrived at the club back in 2020. But under him the former Liverpool defender struggled for game time.
Ilori made just two appearances under Amorim, before being sent out on loan. During Amorim’s first full season in charge, Ilori was completely exiled from the team, and ended-up leaving the club on loan in January to French side, Lorient.
That season Sporting CP won the league title for the first time in the club’s history in 19 years.
Ilori left Sporting CP permanently last summer and was without a club for six months before joining Belenenses in January of this year.
When he joined the club, Ilori gave an interview to Record, where he sent a message to Sporting and Amorim in which he hinted that he may have liked to have stayed at the club and lifted the league title during that 2020/21 season.
“I don’t care at all, because at the end of the day, what matters is the coach’s opinion,” Ilori said.
“I prefer not to talk, because I terminated it recently and Sporting continues to be my favorite club. There is no regret, but I would have liked to have been champion at Sporting and to have played more games. But right now I want to get back to playing as soon as possible.”
What happened to Tiago Ilori?
Ilori was signed as a promising prospect by Liverpool from Sporting CP’s academy in 2013 and even made three appearances for the club’s first team under Jurgen Klopp.
He spent four years at Liverpool, going on three different loan spells before leaving the club in 2017 to join Reading.
In the Championship Ilori enjoyed relative success with Reading, and earned himself a move to Sporting CP in 2019, where he played for the next four years. Although he spent most of that time on loan.
Currently, he is playing for Belenenses in Portugal’s second tier.