Russell Martin<\/a> was given the job. Farioli, who has previously managed Nice and Ajax, is now settled at Porto and is gearing up for a Europa League clash against Rangers on Thursday night.<\/p>\nThe 36-year-old admits he was close to getting the gig in Glasgow five years ago. But now he\u2019s in awe of the work Rohl is carrying out in getting Rangers challenging for honours again.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the Euro tie at the Estadio Dragao, Farioli said: \u201cI cannot deny that I\u2019ve had some contacts with the club. The main one was some years ago when Ross Wilson was the sporting director there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the time I was closer to the opportunity. Of course it is a great club with a big tradition in the UK and Europe so I was very grateful for these talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut life has led me to some really interesting and big projects and I\u2019m happy in the place I am now. I renewed my contract a few days ago and am really happy to be the coach of FC Porto.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think his (Rohl) impact has been fantastic. The start of the season for Rangers wasn\u2019t easy but since Rohl arrived his impact has been massive especially with the recent consecutive wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see the implementation in such a short space of time of his ideas to develop a different system, sometimes playing with three or more recently in a back four.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0_JS394209328.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rangers’ head coach Danny Rohl<\/p>\n
\u201cThey also have the ability to show different combinations on the ball, sometimes with the full-back lower on one side or one of the midfielders dropping.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that says a lot about his quality as a coach and proof of what he\u2019s done as an assistant coach and in the last few years. I think Rangers are very lucky to have a coach of this level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Porto need a victory over Gers to make the last eight in the Europa League table and go through to the last 16.<\/p>\n
While Rohl\u2019s side are already out of the competition and only playing for pride as they look to maintain their eight-game winning run.<\/p>\n
But Farioli says they won\u2019t underestimate the Ibrox side, irrespective of what team they put out, ahead of a crunch Premiership clash with Hibs on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Porto boss said: \u201cNo, don\u2019t worry, from our side we won\u2019t underestimate anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, we respect the club that we’re going to face and the work that the coach is doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey come here having won eight games in a row and they will want to keep that going.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, for sure the mentality that they\u2019re implementing there – that\u2019s enough to make sure we have the right level of motivation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is only one result that we\u2019re going to play for. When you are challenging yourself for the maximum, you cannot drop a single inch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farioli is flying at Porto. They\u2019re top of the league and unbeaten, having won 18 of their 19 games so far.<\/p>\n
And they have ambitions to go far in the Europa League as well.<\/p>\n
But could the Italian coach eventually see himself moving to Rangers in the future after missing out previously?<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cYou never know. As I say, it\u2019s a great club, one of the most historical in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut my future for at least two more years is here in Porto.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy commitment is here and my family and I are really happy here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Farioli admits there has been two previous occasions where he has been close to the Ibrox hot seat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[60102,76431,1811,94,216374,67335,1946,28104,1638,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-726813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-ajax","9":"tag-danny-rohl","10":"tag-europa-league","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-gio-van-bronckhorst","13":"tag-porto","14":"tag-rangers-fc","15":"tag-russell-martin","16":"tag-scottish-premiership","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115973991245857050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}