Speaking in his press conference on Thursday, as per Mais Futebol, Portugal U21s manager, Rui Jorge, has been discussing the developing situation with Fabio Carvalho.
The Liverpool hotshot decided this week that he no longer wanted to represent Portugal at U21s level – a fair decision for a player regularly playing Premier League football for one of the best teams in the world, but the way he communicated his decision was less than ideal.
Indeed, The Athletic stated that Carvalho communicated his decision to quit via text message, something that seemingly rubbed the manager up the wrong way.
Jorge has gone on the record to say how disappointed he was with the way Carvalho dealt with this scenario.
Disappointed in Carvalho
Jorge spoke about the Liverpool youngster’s actions.
“I would have been disappointed by the way it went. The fact that Fábio sent me a message, on Saturday night, saying that he didn’t want to continue in the under-21s. That he had been thinking and didn’t want to continue in the under-21s, because it no longer brought him any benefit. For now, it’s a message. My answer was: ‘Well, Fábio, not a phone call?’ And the disappointment was precisely there,” Jorge said.
“After my message, I thought Fábio would pick up the phone, call me and speak. That’s what I always conveyed to them, that they could talk to me about these matters. It’s a point I make a point of telling all players when they come with us. I only want people in this space who really want to be here.”
Not a good look
It’s not hard to understand why Jorge is disappointed.
It’s just common courtesy to give someone a phone call when you’re making a decision that will let them down, but Carvalho didn’t do that.
However, to be fair to Carvalho, he was born in 2002 and for that generation, texting is the way they have always known to communicate, so he may see nothing wrong with this.
Saying that though, Carvalho is dealing with people much older, and he needs to have the wherewithal to realise how to communicate to certain senior figures when conveying such messages.
At the end of the day, this is a lesson learnt and Carvalho needs to mature from this.
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