This season, we’ll be publishing a monthly health check on how we feel Benfica is doing. Whether it’s performances, tactical decisions, or transfers, we’ll try to cover it all.
With the opening month of the season behind us, Benfica has already lifted silverware, and won two of their opening three matches in the league (during the month of August). In addition to that, they’ve done some decent business in the transfer window, yet, there are tons of other talking points around this team at the moment.
[The win against Vitória is not included in this article as it occurred in September]
WE CAN’T HELP BUT TO COMPARE
Benfica officially opened the season in Aveiro with a win against Porto, earning themselves their ninth Supertaça, a title that the club has struggled to win in their history. When you compare our now nine, to Porto’s 23, it’s incredible, and makes you wonder how the hell there’s such a big gap.
In league play, we had an unfortunate defeat at the Estádio do Bessa to open the campaign, but managed to come away with three points against Estrela da Amadora and Gil Vicente.
Despite the 75% win ratio in August, Benfica fans don’t appear to be impressed, and that could be for a variety of reasons, but let’s go topic by topic.
It’s hard to look at the 2023/24 version of Benfica, and not compare them to the 2022/23 version.
Roger Schmidt and his team’s arrival last season took us by storm, as well as our opponents.
High press offensive football, goals, and wins, we were in love. After what we had endured the previous years, it was as if we were living a dream. Therefore, it’s completely understandable that we can’t help ourselves but to compare. Same manager, same coaching staff, same president, most of the team is the same, so why were things so different 12 months ago?
By September 1, 2022, Benfica had played eight official matches. Let me repeat, EIGHT!
Four Champions League qualifiers (Midtjylland, Dynamo Kiev), and four leagues matches (Arouca, Casa Pia, Boavista, Paços de Ferreira). In those, eight wins, 23 goals for, and four goals conceded.
When we compare that to Benfica’s fixture list at the end of August, the 2023/24 version played four official matches. Of those four, three wins, one loss, nine goals for and five conceded.
By September 1st last season, we had seen double the matches, which naturally had the players performing at a higher level much earlier in the season, than this time around.
Have we been playing poorly? In my opinion, no. Have we been at the level we saw from the team at this stage last season? Of course not, but that’s not surprising.
I think we’ve been the better side overall in all four of these matches, and as I’ve previously said, with a bit more fortune, we don’t have that blemish on our record at the Estádio do Bessa.
The first real evaluation of this team for me will be at the end of October. By then, we will have played nine matches (7 league, 1 supertaça, 1 champions league). Until then, I’ll watch attentively, noting our strengths and weaknesses, but knowing that this team is still finding their feet tactically, as well as from a fitness perspective.
ROGER’S DECISIONS
When Roger Schmidt played Aursnes on the left side of our midfield for 95% of the season last year, no one really fussed, right? When Aursnes played behind the striker once or twice, no one complained, right? Why? Because the team was firing on all cylinders, and the joke was this guy can play anywhere. At that time, it was all fun and games.
As soon as Aursnes got played at right back at a time where Benfica was starting to drop some form, the critics came out to party.
Now, we have to listen to the critics talk about how we are wasting Aursnes out of position, as if they’ve seen him play his natural position more than a handful of times.
Since his arrival at the club, he played in his actual position less than 10% of the time, maybe even less than 5%.
We’ve got others fussing about Ristic.
I was just as hopeful of Ristic being able to show his worth with Grimaldo’s departure, but again, we saw him play maybe a dozen times. No one complained he wasn’t playing last year. Why? Because we had Grimaldo.
Now, all of a sudden, everyone is a Ristic fan and we think he’s good enough. Give me a break.
He featured during pre-season, started in the Supertaça, and it was more than obvious that left side wasn’t functioning. Was it his fault? Of course not, but a manager who worked with him all last season is likely to know if he fits into his strategy more than us who barely saw him play.
What I’m getting at here is, if we had won against Boavista to start the season, the noise would be far less. But since that opening match didn’t go as well as we would have liked, the noise increased.
You would think Roger was playing a center back at striker, or vice-versa.
Aursnes spent a lot of time in that left back space last year. Playing ahead of Grimaldo, while Gri got forward and gave the team some width, Aursnes was dropping in to help build out of the back, but also helped numerous times to cover back there defensively. This isn’t something new for him, and we’ve seen that in his performances.
As Rui Costa said in his interview last night, Freddy is one of the most versatile players in the game today. If he gives the manager assurances and trust, then let’s trust the process. It worked last year, so let’s give this 2023/24 process some time, and then we can judge with a bit more substance and a larger sample size.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
My Big Fat Greek Soap Opera
The Odysseas situation is still very much an active topic for many Benfica fans. I already spoke about it in another post, but to finalize, it sounds as if the manager knew he wanted someone else, and with the arrival of Trubin, made it easier for him to make that decision. Was the decision handled the right way? On the surface it looks like it wasn’t, but we don’t know the chronological order of any discussions that were had, or any reactions. Putting that all aside, we can thank Ody for his time at the club, he had some highs and some lows, and we now hope Trubin meets the expectations. If he doesn’t… I’ll be back to talk about this. To Be Continued…
Transfer Window
I’ll leave the overall transfer window for a separate article now that the curtain has closed, but on the surface, I think we did great business on arrivals and departures. If I had to pick out one spot we aren’t entirely covered at, it’s a backup for Bah. João Victor has pace, but you can tell he’s not entirely comfortable out there. He should be able to provide adequate coverage in some games, and if needed, we’ve got Aursnes who has played there before.
RATINGS & COMMENTS
Mike | 7 out of 10
I think there are areas we can improve on, as is always the case. The team is clearly still trying to understand their new processes and build up their fitness. As I mentioned above, I don’t think we were inferior in any of the matches we played, and offensively, we’ve scored at least two goals in the four official matches referenced in this health check. We need to sort out the goalkeeper situation because Samu isn’t the answer, and with a few more matches under our legs, I think we’ll start to see this team flourish.
Oscar | 4 out of 10
Here is my take and biggest concern – Can Roger lead superstars? We know he can lead a solid 11, and can make them play some attractive football until he runs them out of gas. But now with Benfica getting him multiple stars for each position, is he able to lead this team in a way that everyone is happy and being treated fairly? That is my biggest concern from what I’ve seen this far this season.
Kenny | 4 out of 10
No one has been able to explain to me the Ody situation other than he’s being forced out. From pre-season to official games the decisions in goal make no sense. Samu to me is not safe whatsoever, and now we have a position which a couple of weeks ago was fine with a good starter, and now you will have Sami who has shown he’s not ready and a guy who we’ve never seen play. And if Trubin sucks, you’re back to Samu. When you had Ody, you could’ve eased in Trubin throughout the season to see if he’s actually good.
Jason | 3 out of 10
My concerns is the signing of Kökcü. Will he live up to his price tag. Also a concern is not having a backup rightback, and our best players John Snow and Neres not starting. Does the coach have the balls to sit Kökcü and start Neves? He should, because Neves has outplayed Kökcü in the midfield and earned his spot. I’m for starting our best 11 in form and the coach isn’t doing this. Also would like for him to rotate and have balls to sub players like Di Maria earlier so we have his legs towards the end of the season. Positive I will add is I liked how he brought João Mário back to the starting 11. He’s helped the team tremendously and overall we’ve been better with him on the field.
As you can see, our views are very different, but let us know if you agree or disagree. How would you rate Benfica’s month of August?
