A Busy July

With the first week of pre-season in the books, Benfica gets ready for a busy July. Trips to Switzerland and Holland are on the schedule, as well as exhibitions matches, and two tournaments. It'll be the first opportunity to look at JJ's version of Benfica, and whether we should maintain high expectations or if we should proceed with caution.


This week Benfica will be at Caixa Futebol Campus, where they will train Monday and Tuesday before leaving for Switzerland on Wednesday. During their stay in Switzerland the team will play two exhibition matches, the first one(and first one of the season) will be against Sion, July 12th. There is also talks about a match about against Shahktar Donetsk, but no date has yet been formalized by the club.
On the 15th, the team will return to Portugal via Algarve where they will get ready to participate in the Guadiana Tourney with matches against Atl Bilbao and Anderlecht, on the 16th and 18th respectively.
After Algarve the team will make the trip up to Lisbon where they will most likely enjoy a day off on the 19th, only to come back to work on the 20th, where they will prepare the Official Introduction to the Fans game against Atl Madrid.
A special night not only for the fans who have so much hope deposited on the team, but also for Simao who will return to his former stomping grounds for the first time since leaving 2 years ago this summer.
Following that Tuesday's game, Benfica should be back in the air on Wednesday, as they will need to travel to Amsterdam for that city's tournament where they will be playing on Friday and Sunday, against Sunderland and Ajax respectively.
It'll be back to Portugal where Benfica will start wrapping up their July and preparing for yet another tournament, where they will meet Guimaraes and Portsmouth, in the Guimaraes tournament starting the 31st of July.

Certainly a month full of matches and chances to get a good look at the team. Although pre-season games aren't a very good indicator as to what the season will do during the season, there's still a lot to be taken out of these matches and the team's progress throughout the month.
For one, the squad will start to take shape and we will see a certain degree of separation between the candidates to positions and second stringers. It'll be an interesting month to say the least, throw in the Liga Sagres drawing this upcoming weekend, where Benfica will find out their 09/10 season schedule and we have a very interesting July, not to mention that it's been over a month without seeing the team in action.