Benfica hanging onto Playoff spot in Champions League

Benfica head into Turin to play their final league game of their Champions League campaign needing at minimum at least one point in their encounter with Juventus if they are to reach the knockout rounds of the competition.

Benfica are coming off a shocking defeat to city rivals Casa Pia in the Portuguese League over the weekend and the heat is on manager Bruno Lage to turn around the club's fortunes around and remain alive to play another day.

A Benfica win or draw will move them into the knockout round and if the club suffers a loss, it does not necessarily knock them out, but they will need to have other results go their way if they are to continue moving forward.

Benfica rivals Sporting are also just hanging on and will face Bologna at home needing a win or draw to remain in the competition. In a worse case scenario for Portugal, both clubs could be out of the competition once 10pm WEST comes around tomorrow night. Now that would be a disaster.

Benfica with eyes on yet another striker

Benfica are in the market for what looks like another striker that can actually score regularly and this time have their eyes set on 21 year old attacker Cristian Shpendi who currently applies his trait in Italy with second division club Cesena.

Benfica have spent an exuberant amount of funds on strikers since the departure of Goncalo Ramos to PSG in the summer of 2023 but have yet to find one that can provide goals on a regular basis from the number nine position.

Benfica will need to sell one of their current strikers if they are to make a move for the Italian-Albanian striker, with the departure of Arthur Cabral looking more and more likely during this transfer window as he has interest from Brazilian clubs, Botafogo and Palmeiras and Benfica seem ready to cut their losses.

Shpendi currently sits second in scoring in Serie B with ten goals over nineteen games and looks to fit what the club is looking for in an attacker (We would hope). Cesena is said to be open to moving on from Shpendi for €15M, which is the sum that Benfica is likely to obtain for the sale of Cabral.

Benfica are hoping that if this move does materialize, that it will not be another swing and miss.

Benfica choked... its simple even through all the chaos with Barcelona

Almost 24 hours have passed since Benfica and Barcelona clashed in Lisbon under rainy conditions in a game that would turn into being the most exciting of this new Champions League format and also its most controversial.

Benfica choked away two two-goal leads against Barcelona and allowed a goal in the final play of the game while their players were busy surrounding the match official asking for a penalty that was not given, instead of manning their positions, and went on to lose 5-4 to their Spanish counterparts in a last-ditch play of the game.

The loss took away from a first half hat-trick performance from striker Vangelis Pavlidis, his best scoring performance since joining the club in the summer. The officiating left many shaking their heads on penalties given and penalties missed. While we all try to understand what the point of VAR is, if all they seem to do in most occasions is go along with the referee's decision, no matter how wrong it actually is.

Bruno Lage will need to take some blame his way for his poor decisions when it came to substitutes, bringing on attacking players that defend poorly in Angel di Maria and Alexander Bah while the club was ahead 4-2, left many scratching their heads.

The final whistle was not the end of it, as Benfica President Rui Costa had seen enough and went down to the tunnel area to confront the match officials on their decisions, while police were called to break up a scuffle that unfolded between the two teams in the dressing room area.

The club will need to take a hard look in the mirror today and wonder what went wrong; the two penalties awarded to Barcelona kept them in the game, even though one was a dive from Yamal, a player who committed a foul just ten seconds prior to the call that was not called.

Some will say that Benfica's own penalty given was soft and should not have been awarded and they may be correct, but we can all question if the roles were reversed, would Barcelona have been awarded a penalty right at the end if it was their own player who was checked off the ball into the ground while in the box?

This is a question that cannot be answered, but what can be answered is that Benfica choked. Sure, the officiating was piss poor, but it is up to the club to use their heads in protecting a lead and earning the points that they rightly deserved.

Bruno Lage needs to show that he is a big game manager; his untimely substitutions and the players involved in them are the moves of an idiot and not a manager who deserves to be on the sideline of the country's biggest and most popular club.

Benfica have one left game in the competition as they travel to Juventus and may still get into the knockout playoff even with a loss, as long as certain results go their way, but the club needs to find that killer instinct, the one that sees a boxer put in the final blow when he has his opponent's legs wobbling in the corner. 

The club and the manager still have a lot to learn if they are to go deep in the competition, yesterday was a learning experience. A pretty costly one.