Welcome back to another season and another podcast. As regular listeners will have come to expect, this podcast is in three parts and aims to bring you up to date with the new 2008/2009 Portuguese football/soccer season.
In Part 1 we review Sporting’s 2-0 Supertaça victory against FC Porto (the Supertaça is played between last season’s Champions and the Taça de Portugal winners). The best team definitely won, Yannick Djalo scoring both goals to defeat what looked like a very much weakened Porto side still trying to recover from the loss of José Bosingwa and Paulo Assunção. Beyond the two Supertaça finalists, SL Benfica have assembled a group of new and exciting players and finally look a bit organised thanks to the modern techniques of coach Quique Flores. Although they lost last night’s first ever Eusébio Cup to Inter Milan on penalties, the future is certainly looking bright for Benfica.
In Part 2 we look at the outside contenders for the Liga title, Vitória Guimarães and Sporting Braga. Neither team were particulalry impressive in European competition this week, and with Porto’s cold shouldering of Guimarães, the family of Dom Afonso look a lot weaker team than they did last year, and with the addition of Benfica rejects Luis Filipe and Nuno Assis, one can only fear the worst for Guimarães. On the other hand, Braga seem rejuivenated, stealing Portista Alan from their neighbours and rivals and making shrewd signings in Meyong and Eduardo. Alongside the great and somewhat psychotic manager Jorge Jesus, they are definitely the team to watch this season.
In Part 3 we look over Carlos Quieros’ first squad as National Team coach and give our opinions on whether he is the right man for the job.
Please leave any comments you might have via the message function on the site, and if you have any queries about the podcast you need us to answer, contact us by e-mail at info@footballportugalpodcast.com .
Thanks for listening.
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Welcome back! I’m looking forward to the games and your podcasts this season because like you said the teams are looking more even for the first time in awhile. I’m also hoping Yannick (or Postiga…or SOMEBODY besides Nuno Gomes) sets the league on fire and earns a permanent #9 spot in the national team. Lots of excitement ahead!
Hi Andrew, nice to hear from you again! Agree about Yannick, he really needs to prove himself this year otherwise he’s going to lose out to Hugo Almeida in the race for Portugal’s No.9 shirt. I can’t see Nuno getting many games for Benfica this year, let alone Portugal but the power of celebrity may still work i his favour much like it does for Beckham.
I think Yannick will do well as long as Derlei stays fit. He’s a great player to be with in a 4-4-2 and Yannick will learn a lot from him and score more goals than he ever could playing alongside Leidson.
Steve