Catching Up

With professional and personal obligations taking most of my time during these past 3 weeks, i was unable to post, and for that I apologize. Things seem to have slowed down a bit, and hopefully I will be able to return to my regular porting frequency. In the mean time I wanted to write down some thoughts on these past 3 weeks, starting with the slip up against Guimaraes, that seriously compromised our league title aspirations, to today's game against Estrela.


The Guimaraes Game

Heading into the Guimaraes game having beaten them 4 previous times, was not an indication of automatic "W". Instead the 4 previous wins only served as a sort of mulligan to Guimaraes, who finally got it right. The loss couldn't have came at a worst time, and I would probably trade all the other wins, even the one in the league cup semifinal, for this one. Our team showed their inabilities to put a good game together, once again, and they paid for not being effective in the attacking third. A defensive mental lapse gave one of the few opportunities to Guimaraes and unlike us, they were effective. With Porto's win later on that day we saw the gap increase to 5 points with 8 games left, and our chances for the title diminish.


League Cup Final


In the wake of the Guimaraes disappointing loss, the team started getting ready for the final of the league cup. Despite being in its second year, and considered by many fans of the big three teams as a competition of less importance, much because of the way it has been organized, the league cup is a trophy no less and Benfica wasn't about take this game any less serious than the games they have been playing for the league. In the days prior to the match there was much talk about the referee that had been named for this game. Lucilio Baptista was the name chosen, and if you bother to do the research, you will see the that Lucilio has a clear bias against Benfica. Out of all of the referee's, active and non active, Lucilio is the referee that has shown Benfica players the most yellow and most red cards. He has also called the most fouls and penalties against Benfica than any other referee. In the 38 Benfica games he has officiated Benfica has only won 17. So it's easy to the the apprehensiveness in which we approached the game, and the league's referee nomination. We all know how the game turned out as Benfica got the tying goal from an inexistent penalty, took the game to penalties, and won the league cup in the penalty shoot out.
It's almost ironic that the man who has been our worst enemy so many times, ended up benefiting us in this game. Perhaps a little bit of karma, even though, five other penalties in the same circumstances could not level the disparity in which this individual has hurt Benfica with his biased refereeing. A word has to go out to Quim, as he started and saved 2 penalties to give Benfica the trophy.

Honestly, I don't like winning games like this, as it was clearly a gross error by the referee that gave us a chance to win this game, but taking into consideration Mr Baptista's track record, and the times Benfica has been a victim of bad calls, i'll gladly accept the win and the trophy.
Bad news came at the end of the game has Suazo picked up an injury and needed to be undergo to surgery, which puts him out for the season.

Two weeks of down time, as World Cup Qualifying took precedence to domestic competition.
Our injury bad news continued, as Luisao was hurt playing for Brazil and is projected to be out for the next two Benfica games.
Two weeks to gather strenght and gain back focus on putting together a winning streak to take advantage of any slip ups from our competition.
In these two weeks, the talks about future Benfica players were at its highest, a sort of pre silly season if you may. 5-7 players are being placed at Benfica already for next season, with one of them being a keeper. I'm not going to waste your time writing about these rumors at this time, but promise to get into it at a later date, as many of these were fodder to sell newspapers.

Estrela - Benfica


Injury woes continue as Reyes, who had missed a couple of training sesssions last week, but had recuperated, re-injured himself this past friday and is unavailablefor the game against Estreal. Here's the list of players Quique called:

Keepers: Moreira and Quim;
Defender: Maxi Pereira, David Luiz, Jorge Ribeiro, Sidnei e Miguel Vítor;
Midfielders: Katsouranis, Aimar, Balboa, Rúben Amorim, Urreta, Binya, Di María, Carlos Martins and Yebda;
Forwards: Cardozo, Mantorras e Nuno Gomes.
Estrela has not practiced for the most part of the week, as the players continue to not seeing a paycheck. Nonetheless, a very important game for Benfica.
I will continue to believe, as long as it continues to mathematically be possible, but a anything other than a win tonight can very well shake my belief.