Portuguese managed Fenerbahce and leads his new side into their Europa League playoff sounding confident
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s Vítor Pereira wrapped up his pre-match media duties at Sukru Saracoglu Stadium on Wednesday evening, his assistant Luís Miguel Moreira da Silva waited at the mouth of the tunnel. “Let’s go?” he said as Pereira eventually emerged, before the Nottingham Forest squad followed the pair on to the pitch.
Then it was down to business, Pereira’s first assignment in charge of Forest at one of his 13 former clubs, Fenerbahce. For Pereira, the Kadikoy district of Istanbul represents familiar territory, having lived in the city across two enjoyable but trophy-less spells here as a manager, most recently in 2021.
Pereira knows the difficulty of the challenge in Turkey and the players have been well versed by their fourth head coach of the season. On a crisp evening, barring the bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic that trailed Forest’s police escort to the ground from Sabiha Gokcen airport, south-east of the city, for an hour or two it all felt rather serene compared with the febrile atmosphere that will greet them in Thursday’s Europa League playoff first leg.
