January, 2010

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footballportugal Podcast – 18/01/10

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Another podcast from Steve and Phil, those English senhores of Portuguese football knowledge and opinion.

It’s back to the traditional three parts this week as we let you know about this weekend’s round of games. In Part 1 we focus on the contrasting fortunes of Porto and Sporting; the former are looking very ordinary as they drop points at home to Paços de Ferreira, while the latter look red hot as the rejuvenated Lisbon team beat Nacional 3-2 thanks to 2 excellent Liedson goals.

In part 2 we focus on a familiar old topic, dodgy refereeing. Benfica definitely benefitted from some outrageous refereeing decisions as they smashed Marítimo 0-5 in Madeira. Braga were also fortunate to get a dubious penalty as they broke André Villas Boas’ impressive 100% home record in charge of Académica to come away with a 0-2 victory.

Finally, in part 3 we focus on the other games we failed to cover in the earlier parts. Setúbal are impressing Steve without actually winning games, Castro might be Olhanense’s answer to Steven Gerrard, Belenenses are awful again and Rio Ave really missed Fábio Farias and the player André Vilas (with one ‘l’) Boas as Ronny-tastic Leiria beat them 0-2.

Please do leave us some comments and let us know you’re out there and listening. It was very sad for us to have nobody to talk to but ourselves this weekend!

Thanks for listening,

Steve and Phil

footballportugal Podcast – 11/01/10

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Welcome back for our first podcast of 2010 … and the second anniversary of the footballportugal Podcast!!!

With all the players fresh from their Christmas break you’d expect the fans to be flocking back to the stadiums to watch some live football once again. However, the stadiums were noticeable for their vast areas of empty seating, nowhere more so than FC Porto’s Dragão, which was half-deserted for their fortunate 3-2 win over União de Leiria, Helton providing the heroics in the last moments of the game. Attendances were better at Braga and Sporting, both teams putting in fine performances to beat Nacional and Leixões respectively. Sporting striker Saleiro is catching our eye right now and we talk about his chances of making the Portugal squad for WC 2010. Benfica took thousands of fans to Rio Ave as they struggled to beat a strong side, the class of Saviola proving to be the difference between the two.

In the second part of the podcast we go over the winter transfers so far, Naval’s alleged forged documents which could see them thrown out of the league, and the 25th anniversary of the death of the legendary José Maria Pedroto.

Please keep your comments coming. We’ll be back for another podcast next week.

Thanks for listening,

Steve and Phil