City versus Benfica

BigOscar said:
Nelly's Left Foot said:
Didn't think much of Benfica at all so I am amazed they are unbeaten so far.Easy to say we should have won easily but that's the case tonight.They really created nothing all night and we let them score 2 goals.One from a distance when we didn't try to close the player down and the keeper seemed stunned that he shot and almost didn't move till the ball was at him.

The 2nd was a weak cross that somebody ,Denayer I think, just let it through.Just so so soft. We then woke up and could have scored 4 or 5 times but a bit of bad luck and some special, at times lucky,keeping kept us out.

But if Benfica are a good side then so are we as we were much the better side tonight.
They've not really had to play anyone of any particular note so far, so being unbeaten is probably more an anomaly than a testament to how good they are. PSG were the second seeded team in their group and their youth teams aren't remotely comparable to the first team, then they drew Austria Vienna in the next round, who aren't exactly world beaters.

The Benfica U19 team seems to be mainly younger players who they have high hopes for and then older players who aren't good enough to be in the Benfica B team, it's not their strongest available 11 like ours is, so we should be aspiring to be a lot better than them. (which it sounds like we were) Hopefully it will be an important lesson though in the importance of killing games off when you're dominating and it should be very interesting next year with how well our U18 team has been doing this year.


That wasn't our strongest team imo. I would have said we were missing 3 of our best players tonight. The keeper,right back and Pozo up front.
 
talkativesprout said:
BigOscar said:
Blue Smarties said:
So then, this keeper of there's, is he any good or was it a one off?
About as close to a nobody as anyone can be tbh. I think that's only the second game he's played for Benfica at just about any level, as far as I'm aware he's their 3rd choice 19 year old goalkeeper. Sounds like he had an absolute stormer though

He made what looked like a cracking double save in the first half from a Lopez(thinks) free kick, other than that i didn't see much else.

my lad and I got to meet Vinny in the tunnel just after half time.

[bigimg]http://i681.photobucket.com/albums/vv178/talkativesprout/20140318_200144_zps588f8d67.jpg[/bigimg]

Hope the FA don't see his hand there.
 
Nelly's Left Foot said:
BigOscar said:
Nelly's Left Foot said:
Didn't think much of Benfica at all so I am amazed they are unbeaten so far.Easy to say we should have won easily but that's the case tonight.They really created nothing all night and we let them score 2 goals.One from a distance when we didn't try to close the player down and the keeper seemed stunned that he shot and almost didn't move till the ball was at him.

The 2nd was a weak cross that somebody ,Denayer I think, just let it through.Just so so soft. We then woke up and could have scored 4 or 5 times but a bit of bad luck and some special, at times lucky,keeping kept us out.

But if Benfica are a good side then so are we as we were much the better side tonight.
They've not really had to play anyone of any particular note so far, so being unbeaten is probably more an anomaly than a testament to how good they are. PSG were the second seeded team in their group and their youth teams aren't remotely comparable to the first team, then they drew Austria Vienna in the next round, who aren't exactly world beaters.

The Benfica U19 team seems to be mainly younger players who they have high hopes for and then older players who aren't good enough to be in the Benfica B team, it's not their strongest available 11 like ours is, so we should be aspiring to be a lot better than them. (which it sounds like we were) Hopefully it will be an important lesson though in the importance of killing games off when you're dominating and it should be very interesting next year with how well our U18 team has been doing this year.


That wasn't our strongest team imo. I would have said we were missing 3 of our best players tonight. The keeper,right back and Pozo up front.
But that's due to injuries not choice though isn't it? Benfica have the luxury of a B team who are 3rd in the Portuguese 2nd division which they seem to be prioritising for their top prospects, with about 6 or 7 players who would of been eligible for the U19 tournament playing regularly against grown men instead. We really need to get something similar sorted imo
 
Real shame we didn't get through, but it's been a great effort by everybody & I think the team at that level will get better rather than worse in the coming seasons, well creatively at least. Whether the future defence will be as good as this one has been in tight games remains to be seen but we have some real quality emerging in other areas.

We have a lot of attacking talent knocking on the door, so it should be interesting if we can stay fairly solid at the back.
 
Just to put into perspective how well our lads played in this game, Benfica just battered Real Madrid 4-0 in the semi final.
 

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