Jornada 2 Recap: Nacional in First Place, Classico Ends In A Draw

I’m in surprisingly decent shape this morning after a torrid weekend of drinking my face off and manning the grill for twenty people yesterday. As you probably already know, Quaresma dipped on Porto and headed to Inter Milan with fellow Portuguese midfielder Pelé and some cold hard cash coming Porto’s way.

Given Quaresma’s past failure at Barcelona, I’m surprised Porto were able to hold Inter up for that type of payment and the level of player that Pelé is. While I love Quaresma’s ability and think he has the skill set to be all world, he seems to take whole matches off at a time. He’s shown that he can track back and defend his position somewhat, but those instances are few and far between. For the National Team’s sake I hope Mourinho can get a lot out of him because new Portugal boss Carlos Queiroz failed to include Quaresma in his squad for the two upcoming World Cup qualifiers.

While Quaresma had a great deal of the Portuguese football headlines, his old teammates and a few others played some good ol’ football this weekend. Here’s how it shook out:

Belenenses 2 - 2 P. Ferreira
Benfica 1 - 1 Porto
Nacional 2 - 1 Naval
Académica 1 - 0 Rio Ave
Trofense 1 - 2 Leixões
V.Setúbal 1 - 0 E.d. Amadora
Marítimo 0 - 1 V.Guimarães
Braga 0 - 1 Sporting

Hero of the Week — Rodrigo, Belenenses — His team had no answer for substitute William who came on just after the hour mark and tied the match with a 72′ strike and then gave visiting Paços de Ferreira 2-1 lead on the 90th minute. However, he managed to head home the game tying goal in the 95th minute, salvaging a point for Belenenses. A loss would have had them bottom feeding with Marítimo and Trofense who are still seeking out their first points of the season.

Goats of the Week — Paços de Ferreira’s Free Kick Defense — Watch the video below. The defending players allow THREE blue shirts to essentially stand there, decide who has the best angle, have a cigarette and a sandwich, and then head the ball home for the game tying goal. Abysmal.

Clean Sheets of the Week — Peskovic (Académica), Bruno Vale (V.Setúbal), Nilson (V.Guimarães), and Rui Patrício (Sporting)

I’m going to throw a table up tomorrow and discuss it then since I have a decent amount of real life work to get to this afternoon. Going forward, the table will go here. Yay.

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