The Portuguese league's first week schedule was released on Tuesday and Benfica's opening game time and date is now set. Benfica will open their Portuguese league season on August 10 at 9:30pm WEST at the Estadio da Luz against newly promoted Pacos Ferreira. Benfica will be looking to defend and win their league leading 38th championship this season as Bruno Lage looks to complete his first full season as the clubs manager.
Benfica and Juventus are still discussing a move of right back Joao Ferreira to the Turin club even with the failure of the two clubs closing a move for keeper Mattia Perin due to his failed physical. Benfica are still open to moving the 18 year old Ferreira to Juventus for €5M but have insisted on maintaining 50% of the players rights for any future sale by Juventus. Ferreira is currently with Benfica in America as the club competes in the Internantional Champions Cup.
Benfica though last week that they had acquired Juventus keeper Mattia Perin, that is until the Italian keeper arrived in Lisbon and failed a medical badly throwing the whole transfer situation into doubt. The original though was that Benfica would wait for Perin to recover from injury at Juventus and finalize the transfer in January but reports out of Portugal this week have Benfica back out in search of a goalkeeper to battle Greek International Vladchodimos for the starting role. Bruno Lage has been preaching this summer that he does not want his starters to feel comfortable and wants to have someone that is ready to take over a starting role if the starter under performs. Benfica are being linked with Liverpool keeper Simon Mignolet and Robin Olsen of Roma.
