Some Benfica Bits and Times, They Are A Changin’

Benfica 2 - 1 Vitoria Guimarães — Benfica have had an exciting transfer period with a round of crappy pre-season results thrown in. Before defeating Vitoria Guimarães last night 2-1, the Encarnados had been winless with two draws and two defeats.

Given their massive changes in both coach and personnel, Benfica have had an even rustier pre-season than a given club would be accustomed to. The rust was compounded by these sweeping changes and they’ve looked lethargic, out of place, and incoherent for much of their time on the pitch this Summer.

While Benfica got out to an early 2-0 lead, their play was still somewhat disjointed and aided by the fact that Guimarães looked more like Intertoto Cup competitors rather than a playoff away from the group stages of the Champions League. Both teams will have to get their shit together if they plan on finishing anywhere near European competition this year as their performances thus far in the prologue to the season have been thoroughly underwhelming.

José Antonio Reyes On His Way to Da Luz — In a move that would signal their tenth addition this summer, Benfica are apparently ready to announce the acquisition of José Antonio Reyes on loan from Atlético Madrid. Benfica threw their hat into the Reyes chase a bit late but their interest had a bit more clout due to the fact that they still were “owed” something of this nature through the transfer of See-Mow Sabrosa to Atlético last year.

Reyes adds to Benfica boss Quique Flores’ attacking options, making him by my count, the seventy eighth winger added this Summer and the ninety-fifth possible attacking option at Flores’ disposal in the coming season. In all seriousness, Reyes is another pseudo-gamble that Benfica are taking on guys who peaked at one point or another and were tapped to be the “Next” (fill in appropriate fellow countryman’s name who was awesome in his prime) but never got to become one iota as good as the players they had been compared to.

Portuguese League Offside A Changin’ – In case you haven’t noticed, and judging by the site view statistics , you haven’t, the Portuguese Liga branch of The Offside is in expansion mode. Due to my fantastic blogging about the Beautiful Game from the cute little nation next to Spain, Daryl has come to his senses and finally splashed out on hiring some club-specific bloggers. Over the weekend, an Evil Empire (Porto) blog was added and I’m going to become… wait for it… the new official Sporting blogger!!!! YAY!! CLAP IT UP, SLUTS! I figured that the Porto guy couldn’t be allowed to run riot over the boards with his “We’re 20 points in front” bullshit, so I had to provide a foil to him in the form of a Sporting blog. Daryl is setting up the Sporting branch as we speak and I’ll be there with incoherent ramblings as soon as he hits my mailbox with a WordPress username and password.

The Portuguese section will hopefully expand to include a Benfiquista at the very least and I see the “Portuguese Football League” part of the site becoming less team specific and more an organic sounding board for the league as a whole. With targeted team sites, it will allow me to give more focus to the smaller teams and will still feature each club’s European ambitions and results as well as the weekly recaps, league cup competition coverage and other fun stuff all six of you have become accustomed to. I think the team-specific stuff will free me up to not worry too much about reporting on small moves the Big Three make and allow for a development of daily features and hopefully make for some fun cross-club sniping.

I want to thank Daryl for tripling my current pay ({content} * 3 = {content}) in taking on yet another fantastic responsibility here and giving me more stuff to do on my computer at work that can pass as legitimate money-making endeavors for whenever the boss passes by. The Offside truly is the gift that just keeps on givin’.

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