Welcome back to our 14th podcast covering the 26th “jornada” of the week, which covers the first of many words of the week this week. We start with the sad story of Leixões player Jaime’s suprise retirement from the professional game after attempting and failing to make a ‘Panenka’ style penalty in the last minute of their game against Belenenses. Scandal and shame are the words to sum up Benfica’s 3-0 defeat at home to Académica, the first time Os Estudantes have won at the Luz for 54 years. The defeat was something of a “goleada” and we’ll be debating whether this word means a ‘thrashing’ or a ‘tonking’. Benfica’s defeat meant that Guimarães could gain a 3 point lead over them, which they duly did with a 1-0 win over Boavista. Porto are doing their training at go-kart track in Palmela and beating Setúbal in the process in the first of their 2 games against them within the space of four days. Mariano scores a goal assisted by his handling of the ball and we’ll discuss the age old conundrum of whether a hand ball is ball to hand or hand to ball. Paços de Ferreira keep their hopes alive with a shock 1-2 win at Nacional whilst the other Madeiran team, Marítimo, impress against a woeful Naval. Finally, Sporting leapfrog Benfica into 3rd place with a 2-0 win over Leixões. Steve’s very impressed with the young Leixões attacking player Jorge Gonçalves and also somewhat dismayed at the vanity of Miguel Veloso.
Part 2 doesn’t try to find any excuses for Sporting’s terrible display in their exit to Rangers in the UEFA Cup. Moutinho spent the match crying, Phil thinks Romagnoli is a waste of space and the Sporting fans were as apathetic towards their team as we feared they might be. Congratulations to Rangers and their fans, who behaved impeccably and supported their team fantastically. We also look forward to this week’s Taça de Portugal semi-finals. The two Lisbon teams go head-to -head in a battle of the weakest that is impossible to predict. Setúbal play Porto yet again and we all hope that they can beat them this time with a full strength team.
Finally in part 3 we hypothesise about the chances of the 3 teams vying for the two available Champion’s League spots and we both agree on which team will win the last automatic spot, which team will get the qualifying spot and which team will be licking their wounds and counting the cost of failure to qualify. Our unanimous decision will probably be very surprising but undeniable.
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Thanks for listening.
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This podcast has now been removed
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