Source: FOOTYMAD
Coventry City in negotiations with Sporting Lisbon
Boothroyd hoping to link with Portuguese giants Coventry City manager Aidy Boothroyd is hoping t be able to utilise his contacts with Portuguese club Sporting Lisbon to forge a mutually beneficent partnership between the two clubs. Boothroyd has been to Europe on a fact finding enterprise in an attempt to find young players to bring to Coventry City. During his trip he visited Sporting Lisbon to discuss the forging of links between the two clubs. One of Sporting's find was young winger named Christiano Ronald. Boothroyd spoke of his trip and said, “I am trying to establish links and fortunately I have got some contacts at Sporting Lisbon which is a club that is well renowned for producing players.” “They are playing in the Champions League and are in the top Portuguese league so there will be two or three players there that I might want to give experience. So the idea of going out there was to just develop a relationship and meet some people and see if there is anything we can do to help them and if there is anything they can do to help us." “It is something for the future and something I wanted to do because if I can pick up a young Christiano Ronaldo for a season on loan that wouldn’t be a bad thing would it?” Boothroyd has hopes that some of the Coventry City youngster could go to Portugal to train with Sporting Lisbon coaches, but warned, “It is not a priority but it is something I felt we needed to do because with the Championship being as competitive as it is I think you need to find an edge and what I will be looking for on a regular basis is finding something that gives us an edge over other teams, whether it be loan players, players from abroad, integrating academy players." "Whatever we have got to do, we have got a find a way to do it because we are not the wealthiest team in the league. We have just got to be one of the best teams in the league and have got to find that a different way.” Boothroyd revealed that while he was out of a management post, he travelled round Britain and Europe visiting clubs to see how they managed and coached their players. He said, “I went to Ajax, PSV, AZ Alkmaar, Milan, Bayern Munich and teams in this country just to have a little look at what they do at the very top level because the more you learn, the better chance you have of improving yourself.”