Chapter 516 Mystery

Benfica.

The full name of this team is Sport Lisboa e Benfica (Slbenfica for short), which is a comprehensive sports club located in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, with football as its main sport.

The club was founded on February 28, 1904. Its predecessor was "Lisbon Sports Club" (Sport Lisboa). In 1908, it merged with "Benfica Sports Club" (Gruposportbenfica) and was renamed "Lisbon and Benfica Sports Club".

In the field of football, there is no doubt that Benfica is the top club in Portugal. Although its city rival Sporting Lisbon and league rival Porto have performed very well in recent years, Benfica's position as the top club in Portugal is difficult to shake. This is mainly because the honors Benfica has achieved in history are too brilliant.

Compared with the embarrassing performance of other fringe league clubs in Europe, Benfica is different. Historically, they are the second club to win the European Cup and have reached the Champions League final seven times, a figure second only to Real Madrid, AC Milan and Bayern Munich.

In their own domestic league, Benfica is even more glorious. They have won 31 Portuguese top league titles, 26 domestic Portuguese Cup titles, and they are also frequent winners of trophies in various other competitions.

If this is not enough to prove that Benfica is the most glorious club in Portugal, then another piece of data will definitely prove it - Benfica has the largest number of fans in Portugal!

Statistics released on November 10, 2005 showed that Benfica had an astonishing number of paying members of 160,392. This number is not only the highest in Portugal, but also the club with the most paying members in the world. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United cannot compare to this. Thanks to this, Benfica was also included in the Guinness World Records.

Of course, these are not what we care about. What we care about is Benfica's strength.

The strength of such a luxurious club is worthy of recognition, but since the 1980s, due to the lack of benefits from Benfica's efforts and the club's lack of caution in the transfer market, the club has been in crisis and its performance has declined many times. In the early 1990s, the domestic performance was OK, winning several championships in a row, but it did nothing in the European arena. From the mid-1990s to the early 21st century, it missed the championship for eight consecutive years, and even ranked sixth in the 2000-01 season!

This result is indeed too bad for one of the most dazzling clubs in the world. Fortunately, in the 2004/05 season, the club began to recover under the leadership of the new chairman and won the first league championship in the new century. After that, the team invited the famous coach Ronald Koeman to be the coach, hoping to maintain long-term prosperity!

In this way, the team's performance has shown signs of recovery, and many Benfica fans hope that the team can rebuild its past glory.

Benfica did not disappoint the fans this season. They won the European Cup and directly eliminated Barcelona to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League.

This result satisfied the fans, and they now hope that the team can go to the next level and win a Champions League trophy and bring it back to Portugal, which would be the pinnacle of Benfica's glory.

In fact, although Benfica has performed very well in the Champions League, the team led by Koeman only ranked third in the league this season. Such a result obviously cannot satisfy the fans. However, the team is now striving to compete for the European Champions League trophy. Koeman's position is still stable. If he wants to continue to stay in Benfica, he will definitely get a ticket to the European Champions League final. In this way, he can make up for Benfica's shortcomings in the league.

If they fail to reach the Champions League final, Koeman will have no choice but to submit his resignation to the club given his pitiful third place in the league.

Therefore, this match with Real Madrid is very important for both Benfica Club and Ronald Koeman himself. Of course, this also applies to Real Madrid and Carlo.

Perhaps the experiences of Carlo and Koeman are somewhat similar now. They both try their best to win and eliminate their opponents so that they can continue to coach the team. But in this case, there can only be one winner between the two. This is how football games are. Trampling on the corpses of opponents to reach the top is the same for every successful person.

In the media analysis before the game, Benfica's forward line was still well evaluated.

In the current Benfica team, the two absolute main forces in the forward line are Gomez and Simao, one of these two players is 30 years old and the other is 27 years old. It seems that the forward line is a bit old, but the strength of these two players is unquestionable.

Now, the whole of Portugal knows that the country's golden boy is Cristiano Ronaldo. The man who plays for Manchester United has proved his talent and strength with his performance. But in fact, five years ago, this title belonged to Nuno Gomes, who was the "golden boy" of the same era as Raul.

At the age of 21, Gomez was snatched by Benfica and began to prove his value for money with continuous goals. Under the leadership of the famous coach Heynckes, Gomez soon became Benfica's trump card. As early as before the 2000 Champions League, Gomez had scored 58 goals in 95 games, becoming Benfica's well-deserved top scorer.

Many people think that Gomez's era has passed, but in fact, after entering the 21st century, Gomez's performance is still strong. He continues to prove his condition with goals. Although he is 30 years old now, Benfica still has a main position for him, only because of his outstanding and stable performance.

With such an outstanding striker, it is no wonder that the media described him as a "striker capable of threatening Real Madrid's goal."

Benfica's other main striker is the current team captain, who is also a more threatening striker than Gomez now, that is Simao Sabrosa.

Simao is a striker who came out of the youth training camp of Sporting Lisbon, the cradle of a famous talent. After being promoted to the first team, he scored a goal within one minute of coming on as a substitute in his Portuguese top league debut. This is definitely a beautiful scene worth recalling many times.

After playing for Sporting Lisbon for three years, Simao caught the attention of La Liga giants Barcelona with his excellent performance of 30 times and 10 goals in his last season. At that time, Barcelona was also looking for a wing position to make up for Figo's departure. Simao, who also had strong wing breakthrough ability and free kick skills, was the "Figo II" they were looking for.

So, in the summer of 1999, Simao joined Barcelona for 15 million euros, but this was the beginning of Simao's drowning. Simao's status in Barcelona was up and down. He played 46 times in the league in two seasons and scored only 3 goals. Perhaps because the brilliance of his predecessor was too strong, Simao always lived in the shadow of Figo and did not really integrate into the team.

It was not until 2001 that Simao returned to Portugal and joined Benfica, the city rival of Sporting Lisbon.

At Benfica, Simao became a fan favorite and soon became the captain of the Eagles. In the following years, Simao performed well for Benfica, making 191 appearances in the league and cup, scoring 88 goals. In recent seasons, Simao has been Benfica's top scorer every season. Simao is also considered the best player of Benfica in recent years and one of the best players in the Portuguese Super League.

It is worth mentioning that he also wrote two books and published DVDs to teach children how to play football.

Such a striker is certainly worthy of the attention of the Spanish media. They also constantly give advice to Real Madrid on how to defend Simao. Even Marca said, "Siomao is the player who deserves the most attention. We should focus on him, so that Real Madrid's defense will be basically worry-free." It seems that they attach more importance to Simao than all other players in Benfica combined.

Apparently, to Carlo, none of these reports meant anything.

Benfica's forward line is very strong, the media knows this, and he certainly knows it too. At this time, Carlo is working for Real Madrid's defensive tactics. In fact, this work has been done almost since Carlo accepted Real Madrid. Real Madrid does not have to worry about its forward line at all, but its defense can be said to be a mess.

And yesterday, the team's captain Pavon was injured again in training, which made Carlo even more worried. Such a defensive general is very important to Real Madrid's defense. Now Real Madrid's main defense line, except for Carlos, is almost all newcomers, which really makes Carlo worried.

At the same time, Ronald Koeman in Lisbon was even more troubled than Carlo.

Real Madrid is worried about the defense, and Benfica is even more worried. In fact, if you compare the defenses of Real Madrid and Benfica, Benfica is definitely better. Although their players may not be as valuable or famous as Real Madrid's players, the real strength of a team in a football match is not determined by this.

Almost all of the four main players in Benfica's defense are Portuguese internationals who have played for Benfica for more than three seasons. Not only do they have individual skills, but they also have very tacit cooperation. On the other hand, although Ramos and Cicinho, the two defenders of Real Madrid, are very famous and have high value, they are still young after all, and there are many commercial factors involved in their value. Although both of them are very strong in personal ability, when comparing the two sides' defenses, Benfica's defense line of Osiddes, Luisão, Anderson, plus Leon and Ricardo Rocha, the gap between them is really not small.

This can be proved by the fact that in the last Champions League match, Barcelona and Benfica did not score a single goal.

But despite this, head coach Ronald Koeman is still worried about the team's defense, simply because Real Madrid's offense is too strong.

Koeman doesn't need a careful analysis to know that Real Madrid's starting strikers must be Wang Li and Robinho. The partnership of these two players has become an excellent combination for Real Madrid, and the two veterans Ronaldo and Raul, who have also performed well, can now only serve as their substitutes.

But what does it matter if you know?

How to defend the black-haired boy and how to suppress Real Madrid's attack? This is the most troublesome thing for Koeman because he can't think of a solution.

According to the practices of other teams, such as Chelsea, their approach is defense. Only large-scale defense can suppress Real Madrid's offense, and only the human wave tactics can make Real Madrid's offense powerless, thereby truly hindering the performance of that black-haired boy. In fact, it has been proved that such an approach does have some effect. At least Real Madrid has the fewest goals in the game against Chelsea, and if Chelsea really defends with all their strength, it is not impossible to guard the goal for 90 minutes.

However, football is a scoring sport, not a defensive sport. If all the focus is on defense, how can we win?

If you want to win, you have to attack! !

There seems to be no doubt about this.

After scratching his head for a few days, Koeman felt that the team's hope of winning was really slim. Although he was confident in the team's strength, he was more confident in Real Madrid's strength.

Use offense to let the team score more goals than Real Madrid? —— Barcelona's 8:0 has proved that this method is completely unworkable. Barcelona can't score more goals than Real Madrid, can Benfica? Obviously, the answer is no.

After scoring a goal, they will counterattack? This seems to be a good approach, but is it really feasible? Can Benfica defend? Can any other team really take the lead?

Koeman didn't know, but he knew that if the team didn't score in the first wave of attack, then Real Madrid's chances of taking the lead were too high, after all, their black-haired kid was too strong! !

So, what to do now?

Many thoughts were lingering in Koeman's mind. He really didn't know how the team should play to have any hope of winning.

Perhaps, the players of the team are full of confidence, or perhaps according to the evaluation of the Portuguese media, Benfica still has a chance to win, after all, they have eliminated Barcelona. But as a head coach and after careful research, Koeman knows that as long as the black-haired boy from Real Madrid plays, Benfica's chances of winning are too small.

After all, even without that black-haired boy, Benfica's strength is still somewhat behind Real Madrid, and now, this gap is immeasurable. With two asymmetrical opponents competing, their hope of victory is slim.

"If we can draw with them, then we can go straight to a penalty shootout." While pondering, this idea suddenly came to Coman's mind.

This thought was like a ray of light in the darkness, instantly illuminating Coman's thinking path.

“A tie!?”

Coman thought carefully, trying to grasp this ray of hope and find a solution. Finally, after more than an hour, he gritted his teeth and made up his mind.

"Then let's try it this way." It seems that Koeman made this decision with great determination.

On this day, Real Madrid's special plane arrived in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.

At Lisbon's international airport, many reporters and fans were waiting there to welcome the arrival of Real Madrid. When the players walked out of the cabin, many reporters rushed forward to interview them, and the surrounding fans also shouted the names of Real Madrid players.

These are not local Real Madrid fans, they are all local Portuguese fans.

If anyone sees this scene, they will definitely sigh at how many Real Madrid fans there are. Even in Portugal, there are so many loyal fans. But in fact, these fans are all local fans in Lisbon. How could they like Real Madrid, which is far away in Madrid, Spain?

This time, the reason why so many fans came to pick up the team at the airport was because they were all fans of Sporting Lisbon. Sporting Lisbon and Benfica have been sworn rivals in the same city for hundreds of years. The relationship between them is like that between Barcelona and Real Madrid. There is almost no possibility of reconciliation, and the same is true for these fans in private.

And now, Real Madrid has become Benfica's rival. As the European competition has ended this season, Sporting Lisbon certainly does not want to see its city rivals achieve any good results, so this time, they all come to cheer for Real Madrid.

Sporting Lisbon fans hope that Real Madrid can teach Benfica a lesson and eliminate them directly.

This way, they have a reason to gloat over others' misfortunes.

After arriving in Lisbon, Real Madrid used the afternoon to do some simple training in a fixed venue. Afterwards, the team returned to the hotel to rest and get enough rest for tomorrow's game.

The first round is crucial. For Real Madrid, this is an away game. Carlo hopes that the team can perform normally in tomorrow's game. As long as they can score 1 or 2 away goals, the next match at the Bernabeu will be much easier.

As for defense, although Carlo tried his best to strengthen it, he couldn't do anything without the right tools. He didn't have many ways to deal with Real Madrid's defense, so he just hoped that the team could score more goals than their opponents.

"I hope so."

The next day on the field, Carlo was watching Real Madrid's training during the warm-up training and sighed.

However, a few hours later, when the two teams were standing on the field at the same time preparing to kick off, Carlo was no longer worried about the team's defense - because Benfica did not start Simao at all, and the only striker was the symbolic Gomez.

"What on earth is he up to?" Carlo looked at the Benfica coaching bench on the right with a puzzled look on his face.

(To be continued)