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Another Portuguese football Week-End

Tuesday, 06 March 07, 04:01 PM

The Portuguese Superliga hasn’t been very exciting this week end. The results were the same as the last turn: Porto – Sporting Braga 1 – 0, Desportivo das Aves – Benfica 0 – 1, União de Leiria - Sporting 0 – 0. That is: Porto still on top, Benfica following at 4 points and Sporting keeping on losing points. Sporting had another overall good performance, but wasn’t able to finalise (not to mention Liedson’s red card after 22 minutes).

Following last week’s highlights, let’s talk about two very important players: Ricardo Quaresma (FC Porto) and Simão Sabrosa (SL Benfica), two players, whose career in professional football started at Sporting, then had an unlucky experience at FC Barcelona and came back to Portugal.
By now, Quaresma and Simão are the most influent players in their teams, able to produce some excitement in two (honestly) quite boring games. They didn’t score this time, but offered some quality football, as they always do. This year, their trademark is to be seen in more then half of the goals of Porto and Benfica. Some statistics:

Quaresma
Games- 16
Games from the first minute - 16
Full games- 9
Games with no influence on the result- 3
Minutes- 1295
Goals- 6
Assists- 10

Simão:
Games- 18
Games from the first minute- 18
Full games- 13
Games with no influence on the result - 4
Minutes- 1579
Goals- 9
Assists- 6

Quaresma seems to have a better performance on assists (one every 129 minutes) and Simão on goals (one every 175 minutes). Anyway, it is a pleasure to see those two players on the pitch, they play a great role in every game.

The Portuguese-week end has also been signed by the sudden unexpected death of Manuel Bento (Golegã, 25.6.1948 – Barreiro 1.3.2007) unanimously considered one of the best Portuguese goal keeper ever. His career has been mostly at Benfica, where he was transferred in 1972, as a substitute of José Henriques. Between 1973 and 1976 Bento and Henriques turned over in the goal. At the age of 28 in 1976, Bento became the 1st choice for Benfica and also make his debut with the Portuguese national team. He just left Benfica in 1992 at the end of his career, but just as a player. He was currently working with success for the Benfica’s youth sector.

Manuel Bento was quite a small guy (1,73 cm) but compensated with his acrobatic and brave defences. He collected 63 caps with the national team, playing at the European Championship in 1984 (his best game was the semifinal with France, in which Portugal was defeated 3-2) and at the World Cup Mexico 1986. With Benfica, Manuel Bento played 611 games with Benfica, suffering 447 goals and winning:
8 Portuguese Liga
6 Portuguese Cup
2 Portuguese Supercup
1 Portuguese Player of the Year

Nuno Gomes, scoring the decisive goal in Desportivo das Aves – Benfica dedicated the goal to the memory of Manuel Bento.

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Posted by LaViz | Comments (1)

1 Comments

Pedro Teigas
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Pedro Teigas Wrote: | 22.37GMT | Mar 11, 2007

Simão Sabrosa is the best player in the portuguese league,the master,the king,the special one!!!!

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