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28/08/07 José António Camacho was confirmed as Benfica coach last week, taking over from sacked Fernando Santos. The
importance the club has in Portuguese society was reflected in the blanket television coverage of Camacho's arrival at Tires aerodrome. Then sports daily O Jogo
made the fascinating news that "Camacho demands shin guards in training!" its main front page story the next day. That first training session further illustrated the phenomenon that is Benfica: four thousand
fans packed into the training ground in Seixal, south of the River Tagus, with many more locked out. In contrast, neither União de Leiria v Boavista nor Naval v Belenenses, opening games of the Liga, could
attract more than 1,500 each, the former match played out in a (now) 25,000-capacity stadium purpose built for Euro 2004. Camacho's decision to open up the first training session to the public served to stoke the
sudden euphoria emanating from the Luz after a miserable start to the season. The club naughtily tried to cash in by limiting entry on the second day to fans wearing the official shirt, but even this flagrant bit of
profiteering did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm. Indeed, there were over 50,000 at the Luz on Saturday for the visit of Vitória de Guimarães, although the enthusiasm did not carry much further than kick
off, Benfica once again showing that the quality of the squad is painfully limited. It's true that a junior, Hugo Vítor, had to be drafted into the back four alongside stop-gap Katsouranis after David Luís had
broken a toe in training, but that doesn't excuse the lack of ideas going forward. As Camacho said after the 0-0 draw, which gives Benfica just two points from a possible six: "There's a lot of work to do."
They'll have to do it before the vital second leg of the Champions League qualifying round against FC Copenhagen on Wednesday. Benfica travel to Denmark 2-1 up, but that away goal could be a killer.
The first Liga 'clássico' of the season saw FC Porto get revenge for the Supertaça defeat at the hands of Sporting and by the same score, 1-0. The goal generated some
controversy, as is to be expected at any 'clássico': Sporting central defender Anderson Polga prodded the ball off Porto striker Hélder Postiga's toe, it rolled towards the goal, Polga's team-mate Tonel stepped over it
and Serbian goalkeeper Stojkovic picked it up on the six-yard box. The referee considered it a back-pass and blew for an indirect free-kick, from which Raul Meireles crashed the ball home. Porto
are, unsurprisingly, top, but what is surprising perhaps is that they share the lead with Marítimo of Madeira, looking a very organised outfit under former Brazil coach Sebastião Lazaroni
. Two goals from diminutive Brazilian striker Kanu were enough to beat Boavista, still looking like a team of strangers. They have not managed a single goal after three official games (two in the Liga
, one in the Taça da Liga), although they did have two reasonable penalty claims turned down against Marítimo. As for the national side, it seems that the traditional calculator
will have to be dusted off once again to work out the permutations for qualification for Euro 2008 after another two points were dropped, this time in Armenia;
only a brilliant Cristiano Ronaldo equaliser saved Portugal even deeper blushes. The pitch was atrocious, but that doesn't explain the lack of fire in Portugal's play. A Equipa das Quinas
are four and two points behind Poland and Finland, respectively, in Group A. Portugal's next two games are at home, but they're against direct rivals Poland and Serbia. As coach Luís Felipe Scolari
said: "This result complicates matters because we have a small margin for error from now on." (This article appeared on the international website Extra Football) 21/08/07 The
chicotada psicológica
is a tactic well liked by club presidents in Portugal: results aren't going so well, so sack the coach and appoint a new one (giving the squad said 'psychological whipping'). This normally happens with low-profile clubs after half a dozen games. Famously it happened at FC Porto before a ball had been kicked in earnest in August 2004, post-Mourinho Luigi del Neri given no time to warm the dug-out seat. This season it's another
Grande that's jumped the gun: Benfica have sacked their coach. Fernando Santos
was never a very popular figure at the Luz; a confessed Benfica fan, his main crime was seen as having coached Sporting and, more poisonously for Benfiquistas, FC Porto
to the fifth title of their probably never again attainable, by any club, Penta (five league titles in a row) in the late 90s. Benfica had played just two official games
before Santos was shown the door. Midweek, the side put in a pale performance against a useful FC Copenhagen at the Luz in the first leg of the third qualifying round of the Champions League
and were 'saved' by two moments of inspiration from oldster Rui Costa, although the result gives no guarantees for the final outcome of the tie. An ominous sign for Santos was the whistling from the crowd before half-time.
Then in the first Liga game of the season, another weedy display against newcomers Leixões (back in the top flight for the first time in 18 years) ending in a 1-1 draw. Benfica
had gone in front a minute from time; Fernando Santos, never one (perhaps unwisely for him) to hide his feelings, was seen crossing himself after Petit's (unique) header went in, confirming perhaps that his
tactics were based more on a wing and a prayer than on wingers and play-makers. You could have put money on Benfica not holding the lead going into added time, and sure enough, defensive disarray let in Nigerian
midfielder Udochukwo Nwoko for the equaliser in the dying seconds. The Benfica president, Luís Filipe Vieira, should perhaps have let Santos go at the end of a season that saw them winning no
trophy and finishing third in the Liga, giving them the chore of qualifying for the Champions League Group Stage. But the 'Engineer'
was kept on, and if the truth be told, his already fragile position with Benfica fans was exacerbated by the club's close-season transfer strategy … or lack of it. Key player and captain Simão Sabrosa
got his wish (at the third time of asking) to leave the club on a lucrative contract (God, how they miss him!), diminutive Italian striker and crowd favourite Fabrízio Miccoli
was not considered important enough to hold on to, and on the eve of the Copenhagen game, with his name already on the team sheet in bold black biro, Manuel Fernandes
fled the coop to return to the relative sanity of Everton. In their place, Santos was left with the undoubted quality of Paraguayan striker Óscar Cardozo
but the dubious value of (admittedly battling) Argentinian striker Ruben Bergessio, American Freddy Adu, looking all of his 18 years in his début against Copenhagen, and Argentinian Angel di Maria,
who arrived injured and has yet to line up. Add to this injuries to central defenders Luisão and Zoro, meaning that in the absence of other solutions, Greek midfielder Katsouranis
has had to fall back to the centre of defence, and we can see that Benfica's season plan appears to have been scribbled on the back of a cigarette packet. But nudging the wobbling Fernando Santos into a topple, Luís Filipe Vieira insisted that any coach would be delighted to work with the squad that Santos had at his disposal. Santos said that he was
surprised at what had happened; he was the only one in Portugal. Meanwhile, Vieira nipped over to Spain to secure the services of Spanish coach José António Camacho, well-liked by
Benfiquistas and returning to the Luz after a relatively successful spell between 2002 and 2004. He will be Benfica's eighth coach under Vieira, who became president in November 2003.
(This article appeared on the international website Extra Football) 15/08/07
'The Best in Europe' trumpeted Record's front page banner headline Monday: it's Sporting, apparently, who, along with Dynamo Zagreb, have not yet lost a single official game this year (25 in
total). This is bare-faced hype, of course, but the three national sports papers published daily (the others are 'A Bola' and 'O Jogo') often have to bend over backwards to find an angle that will shift copies. The photo accompanying Record's bold assertion was of newcomer Izmailov turning away after scoring Sporting's winner (an excellent swerving drive from outside the area) against FC Porto in the 29
th Supertaça (de Cândido de Oliveira, a former national team coach and journalist). This is the football season's annual curtain raiser that pits the previous season's Liga
Champions (this time FC Porto) against the winners of the Taça de Portugal (Sporting). The Supertaça
is actually a fair reflection of FC Porto's hegemony over Portuguese football in recent years: they've won 15, Sporting six, Benfica four, Boavista three and Vitória de Guimarães one. Like last weekend's
Clássico between Sporting and Benfica
for the Guadiana Tournament, the game was a poor advertisement for the coming season, with heart too often ruling head and the top players (Quaresma for Porto, Liedson for Sporting) firing squibs. It was also an opportunity for Porto coach
Jesualdo Ferreira to get in the first moan of the season against the referee, for an alleged penalty not given Porto's way. There'll be a lot more whingeing to come, and not just from the Dragões.
Boavista coach Jaime Pacheco was also flexing his muscles on the referee-criticising front after his side went down 1-0 at Beira-Mar of the Liga de Honra
(second tier) in the second round of the Taça de Liga. Boavista midfielder Diakité was (justifiably, as it happens) sent off with a direct red early in the second half, seriously prejudicing the team's
performance. But their performances are still ragged affairs; former Stoke City (English Championship) striker Sambégou Bangourade of Guinea-Conacri, presented Monday, was the club's 17th
(!) signing of the season. At this rate, it will take two or three seasons for the players to get to know each other … The Taça da Liga, sponsored by Carlsberg, is in
theory a good idea. It involves only the 32 clubs from the top two divisions; the first round is between clubs from the Liga de Honra; the second round includes clubs from the bottom half of last season's Liga;
and the third round brings in the top teams. The club placed lower in last season's standings always plays at home. It's provided the Liga de Honra and the more modest Liga
sides with good, competitive warm-up games … but it remains to be seen how the top teams react to having what may be an unwelcome competition on their calendars come mid-winter, when the Liga
and Europe are uppermost in their minds. One thing the Taça da Liga has not been so far is a particular hit with the public. Apart from games involving Leixões and Vitória de Guimarães
, whose fans are notoriously fanatical, the competition has been played out before almost empty stadiums, the beach with apparently a more enticing siren call than the pitch. But this is no news in Portugal, where
viewing from a bar or the sofa seems generally to be preferred to an expensive (by local standards) trip to the stadium. Paços de Ferreira, who have qualified for Europe for the first time in their history,
staged a presentation game at the weekend against Sparta Rotterdam (2-1) … in front of just 200 spectators. Meanwhile, all in Portuguese football look on in envy at the attendances and atmosphere generated
by the game in England and Spain, given blanket coverage on the nationwide cable channel SportTv. And they look on, and on, and on … (This article appeared on the international website Extra Football) 09/08/07 FC Porto had a very successful
Rotterdam Tournament, beating the Chinese side Shenhua 3-0 and benefiting from Feyenoord's 1-1 draw with Liverpool. The Brazilian newcomer Leandro Lima scored two and, going on his performances so far, really looks
the business. The bucket of cold water over the team's minor triumph came on the flight back to Portugal: it was diverted to Lisbon because national carrier TAP
needed the plane to be in the capital for an outbound flight to Paris. Porto's players, coaching staff and directors were shifted to another plane which was found to have too few seats. There were words and, after the police were called, the General Director of Football at the club, Antero Henriques, was asked to get off. The Porto group followed suit in solidarity and made their way north and home by coach. TAP subsequently offered a thousand apologies but too late; Porto said they would not be using the airline again.
Benfica won the Guadiana Tournament, played out in the Algarve, beating Sporting 1-0
in the final game and lifting what appeared to be a full-scale replica of the Guadiana Bridge as a trophy. It was the first Clássico
of the season but had little of a 'clássico' about it, the players apparently deciding that it would be a better idea to hack bits out of each other rather than produce football that would whet fans' appetites for the coming season. Benfica's goal came from a thunderous header by Brazilian central defender
David Luíz, consistently revealing a maturity beyond his 20 years. The other club involved in the three-way tournament was Real Bétis, who came second. Bétis had ex-Sporting man Ricardo
between the sticks, but it seems that he will not be missed: Sporting's new 'keeper, the Serbian Stojkovic, has been exuding safety, something that Ricardo, despite his international reputation, could never
quite manage. Off the field, the dire state of most Portuguese clubs' finances was illustrated by two cases: Sporting Braga are claiming from Boavista
a 269,000-euro instalment for the transfer of Brazilian striker Elpídeo Silva, dating back from the 2000/01 season, and Estrela da Amadora
have been told to pay 300,000 euros in unpaid salaries and bonuses to former players and staff. Club president António Oliveira said that the debt can be paid off "by the end of the year".
Less than two months of Benfica striker Nuno Gomes' salary would get Estrela or Boavista out of their immediate difficulties. The Portuguese international returned to full training this week after injury,
possibly motivated by knowing that he tops the ongoing poll for sexiest Portuguese man being run by national daily newspaper Correio da Manhã. Among actors, models and other Portuguese celebrities, Nuno
currently has 42% of the vote, José Mourinho 4%, Cristiano Ronaldo 3%, former FC Porto 'keeper Vítor Baía 2% and Luís Figo 1.5%.
'Sexy' would not be a word immediately associated with the relationship between FC Porto president Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa and his former partner Carolina Salgado. The latter's book 'I Carolina'
, published at the beginning of the year, breathed new life into the so-called 'Golden Whistle'
investigation into the bribing of referees, which is going through the pre-trial phase and targets, among others, Pinto da Costa himself. The book is currently being turned into a film, 'Corruption', with João
Botelho as director. This week saw the shooting of the scene that depicts the first time Pinto da Costa and Carolina spent the night together, in Santiago de Compostela. The film is set to be the most popular in the
history of Portuguese cinema. (This article appeared on the international website Extra Football)
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