Sporting boss Ruben Amorim says Manchester United fans may think “the new Alex Ferguson has arrived” if his team beat Manchester City on Tuesday.
Amorim, 39, has two more games as Sporting head coach before taking over at Old Trafford – including the Champions League match against his new team’s rivals.
“If the result is very negative, expectations will drop and I don’t think that’s a bad starting point, when you begin at Manchester United,” he said.
“If we win they’ll think the new Alex Ferguson has arrived, which is very difficult to maintain.
“I’m fully aware that I’m going to be judged as a manager on this game, and only on this game, and I realise what [people] can take from this depends on the result.”
Ferguson won 38 trophies during 26 years as Manchester United boss before retiring in 2013. He is leaving his role as club ambassador at the end of the season.
Sporting have won 14 of their past 15 games, only losing in the Portuguese Super Cup this season.
Both City and Sporting are on seven points from three Champions League games so far.
In 2022 City beat Sporting 5-0 on aggregate in the last 16 of the competition.
“I feel like I’m a better coach 1730819435,” said Amorim. “Unfortunately what I feel is that Pep Guardiola has also become an even better coach, so the gap remains.
“[City have] the best team in the world and the best coach in the world.”
City’s Portugal midfielder Bernardo Silva was a team-mate of Amorim’s at Benfica in 2013-14.
“He always showed he could read the game because he played different positions – as a defender, on the left, as a midfield player,” Silva said on Monday.
“When he arrived Sporting hadn’t been champions for 20 years. He changed the playing paradigm of Sporting. They are the best team in Portugal by far.
“He will be a rival but I am glad someone else from Portugal is in the best league in the world.
“When Ruben becomes coach of Man United, we will worry about that then. Right now we want three points to get to the top eight.”
BBC Sport chief football news writer Simon Stone
When I arrived at the press conference room on Monday for Sporting’s pre-match media, I was only one empty seat away from Ruben Amorim, who was watching one of his players answering questions.
I said hello and shook Amorim’s hand. He said hello back and seemed perfectly civil.
Then, after answering 20 minutes of questions in his native Portuguese, Amorim was asked another five or six by the English media.
Again, the answers were in Portuguese. Asked by an English TV journalist if he could offer an answer in English, he declined. His press officer said English journalists would get a lot of answers in their native tongue when he starts officially at Manchester United on 11 November.
The clip of the exchange between Ruben Amorim and English media has been widely shared on social media – and the Sporting boss was explaining why he doesn’t want to answer any more questions in English at Monday’s pre-match news conference:
“Sorry, sorry. They will miss me in Portuguese so I have to speak Portuguese.”