Club Season Update

i am impressed with Almeida….. a bit

Pity he got injured and will most likely not be available for the two last NT qualifying games.

Posted from  Portugal

Danny had a lovely assist in the APOEL v Zenit match. ;p

Anyway I’m worried about our current central backs, both Alves and Pepe tend to easily get a red card due to their behaviour.

Posted from  Netherlands

Really Ivan?! I saw he came off with a hamstring injury. Bad news man.

Seems like Almeida has gotten injured and will probably miss Portugal’s last 2 qualifying games. Hmmm, maybe this will make Bento experiment more…. Postiga is a lost cause now and Almeida injured, seems like Bento has to call up youngsters like Wilson Eduardo, Nelson Oliveira, that new kid Rudi, Nuno Gomes or even Bebe for Gods sake! Come on Bento….The reason we have a striker dilemma is cause our NT coaches are always fixed on certain players, and dont like to experiment………..

Also, when the hell is Bento going to get his head out of his ass and put Danny in the midfield? I mean, I don’t get his decisions one bit sometimes. Danny plays terrific for Zenit in midfield, how can Bento not see this? The only reason would be if we literally had NO MORE wingers to be used, and Danny had to fill that gap. But that isn’t the case, we have great wingers like Quaresma, Vieirinha, Pizzi etc. So I dont get why Bento doesn’t simply take out Veloso or Eliseu or who ever else he decides to go with next, and bring Danny into the middle and maybe Manuel Fernandes. There. So simple. Then replace that wing spot with one of the players I mentioned above etc. Its really simple, but Bento likes to complicate things. Hopefully he saw the great passes from Danny in the Champions league and Quaresma’s beautiful wing play with Besiktas to finally make him realize hes being stubborn as hell.

Honestly sometimes I wish I would do a better job if I was in his position.

I see now that Bento hasn’t really done anything out of the ordinary. When he was assigned, he made changes that were OBVIOUS that another stubborn coach completely messed up when in charge (CQ). But other than those obvious changes that anyone with half a brain could have made, he hasn’t done anything else. He did however bring joy the squad, and victories as well.

But of course, we will only see what hes actually worth against Denmark in that final game. That will make me decide if i’m with him, or against him.

He did put Danny in the midfield in the 85th minute of the Cyprus game… not too much time, I guess, but he was used there for almost 10 minutes.

Posted from  Portugal

@ Ivan Thats not what I mean. From Bento’s choices it seems like he doesn’t have that much midfield options. Fair enough. But we have tons of attacking talent and on the wings. Instead of calling up Danny and place him in the forward category, simply remove one of those midfielders who probably wont even play (Eliseu etc.) And place Danny there. Then you have an open space to pick another talented attacker/ winger on the team.

@Tiago … i definitely agree with you on the experimenting with attackers theory, but are you willing to experiment at such a critical stage of the qualifications? wouldn’t you rather do that in friendlies (this is given if the federation is generous enough to give the team some important friendlies to experiment with :@)

Danny deserves a spot in midfield … the russian league to me is a credible one to consider if a player is talented or not.

@Ahmad you’re right but the experimentation should have already happened in the friendlies we had against Chile, Luxembourg (and the one we missed after the Cyprus match, because the FPF refuses to arrange friendlies) except he kept the same formation with the typical one on one substitutions.

Anyway Danny had a good game for Zenit scoring two goals, as did Nani for ManU against Chelsea scoring a great goal.

Posted from  Netherlands

João, I think there were 30 or almost 30 players used throughout Paulo Bento’s games. You forgot we played with Argentina and Finland too. Though I still wish FPF would arrange one extra friendly in each of the following months: in June, 3-4 days after Norway, and in September, 3-4 days after Cyprus. FPF can’t arrange friendlies in November yet, because we might end up in the play-offs (but I really wish we win the group) that’ll be played that month. What still baffles me is that Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, England and probably other teams already had arranged friendlies in November, even before they were qualified. Perhaps they were very sure that the team would qualify and assigned greater prizes for their players, depending on how early they would qualify.
I suspect that FPF will start to look for opponents if we win the group or finish best 2nd at the end of 11th October, but you never know with them. They might still refuse to give Paulo Bento more fixtures. I would certainly be mad if it happens. 2011 would be the year with least games played by the NT (8) since 1997, where we only had 7 games.

Also, what do you mean by “typical one on one substitutions”? I’ve seen reports of those friendlies and Paulo Bento experimented quite a lot of choices, if that’s what you mean.

Posted from  Portugal

*2011 would be the year with least games played by the NT (8) since 1998, where we only had 6 games.

1998, not 1997.

Posted from  Portugal

October 11 is my birthday …. we better qualify

will coentrao and pepe be available for our NT?? Real Madrid said that the players are injured are are scheduled to be sidelined for 3 weeks :S

Just a reminder Paulo, dont forget to start working on the Preview for both Iceland and Denmark games for Portugal a bit early so that you post the preview BEFORE the games have started.

it’s amazing how it’s always the Portuguese players in Real Madrid that get injured before international breaks :@