DiMaria Speaks

In an interview conceded to Argentine Daily, La Capital, DiMaria makes a brief balance of the past year and his call up to the olympic team, so far so good. In this interview, DiMaria also states clearly that he plans on spending one more year at Benfica and then "jump" to either Spain or England - "Mi deseo es estar un año más en Portugal y después pegar el salto a Inglaterra o España" were his exact words.
Now hold up, while i have no problem with ambitious speeches and setting high goals for yourself, I think DiMaria is getting a little ahead of himself.


Last season it was an up and down season for DiMaria, making 43 appearances out of 50 possible, 1 goal and 5 assists were his tallies(Freddy Adu did a lot more with 18% of DiMaria's minutes(2107 vs 393). If i had to rate his season, I'd give him a 7 out of 10, factoring in his young age, his first year in a different culture away from his family and a different style of futebol.
It's exactly these two things that DiMaria blames for his inconsistent season,along with the fact that he did not go through preseason(he was away at the U-20 World Cup, in the interview.
He also states in the interview, that his family joined him in Portugal in January and that helped him finish off the season on a high note, and that he did.

Bought by Benfica in one of those 2 for 1 deals, DiMaria was labeled as the next Simao, but came up very short in his first year. There's no doubt in my mind that the kid is talented, as soon as i laid eyes on him, and i could tell right away that he had considerable talent for his age, BUT, he still needs a lot of growing up to do.
At 20 years old, I think it's a bit premature to be thinking about playing in Spain or England in a years time, but then again, if he does in fact make the jump, it could only mean that he had a great year and that he helped Benfica in the process.

He is banking on having a great Olympic tournament and a good year with Benfica to make the jump, and while realistically at Benfica he will have plenty of chances to do that, I can't say the same thing about the Argentine Olympic squad, where he will most likely be blocked by much bigger household names such as Messi, Aguero, Mascherano, Sosa, Acosta, Banega, Riquelme and Lavezzi, only to name a few.

Word of advice - Come back with the gold medal, and some minutes. Get your head on straight, focus on improving your game from last season, help Benfica and be what the fans expect you to be - an instrumental player in a title contender team.
I'm not even asking that you surpass Simao, as he is a hard act to follow, just be Angel DiMaria, and help Benfica win the league title, once you have achieved that, then you can think about making the jump.
Until then my friend, you still have to run a lot of miles, make a lot of nets move and raise the stadium with your futebol. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, your fair share of humble pie will also get you far.

It's sad that most foreign players, young and old, know nothing about the mystic of Benfica, and that is one of the reasons why Benfica has gone down over the years. I can bet that DiMaria knew very little about Benfica, except for what he might have read on wikipedia (I'm reaching here).
The truth is that, South American players see Portugal as a stepping stone, a gateway to the big leagues in Europe, it's not the club's prestige, it's not the famed sacred mantle, or even the money - even though the money is a little better than what they were making in South America - it's all about the trampoline. Off course, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, who hasn't worked at a shitty place, in order to get where they want to go? I certainly have.

Not too long ago, David Luiz spewed similar words to Terra, a Brazilian website, he then retracted them, claiming that it was a misunderstanding between him, his publicist and the aforementioned website.
It seems to me that maybe it's time for Benfica to start up a class on media relations for all the players, and while they're at it why not include Benfica Mystic 101 - a prerequisite for all young players, in the curriculum






Read the article here(Spanish Only)