European competitions (ie Champions League) start “for real” this coming week with Sporting taking on Barcelona and Porto host Turkish outfit Fenerbahçe.

I’m going to Virginia for work this Sunday though Wednesday then on Thursday morning I’m headed to Vegas for my cousin’s bachelor party. You’ll get updates whenever I’m a) awake, b) sober, and c) able to acquire internet. I don’t plan on being b) much in Vegas, and I think the internet might take a back seat to explaining why I’m wearing a wedding ring to some drunk and available blonde ladies. I think I’m going to go with either “I wear it in honor of my wife who I miss dearly and died in a boating accident” for the sentimental value or maybe the hopeless romantic angle: “My wife left me months ago but I still have an amazing love for her and I prefer to be reminded of the great times we had.” I’ll try both out and let you know which one gets me in the sack with a chick that looks like this faster. I know you’ll all be waiting with bated breath.

At the draw, UEFA officials made sure to remind us that a cloud exists over Porto’s participation this year due to their implication in the Golden Whistle bribery scandal. If nothing’s been done with the arduous appeals process that has taken place thus far, I’m sure nothing’s going to happen to their status between now and Matchday 1.

The draw was completed earlier today and the groups for the two are as follows:

Group C
Barcelona
Sporting
FC Basel 1893
Shakhtar Donetsk

Group G
Arsenal
Porto
Fenerbahçe
Dynamo Kyiv

For me, Sporting have the easier draw of the two. Some were calling Group G the toughest of the lot, as teams such as Turkish side Fenerbahçe and Ukranian club Dynamo Kyiv tend to pose difficult away test and are tricky encounters no matter where the match is played. In spite of Porto’s domination of the league last year, I actually think Sporting have a better shot of making it through simply by looking at the relative strength of the two groups. On the other hand, Sporting just got their asses handed to them by Real Madrid 3 – 5 in a preseason friendly yesterday and Porto started off the domestic season looking rather dominant, so what the hell do I know?

The first match, played at Estádio D. Afonso Henriques in Portugal, yielded a 0 – 0 draw. Although the match is being played away, Guimarães have the upper hand when it comes to the tiebreaker as the away goals are worth more on aggregate than home goals (sorry for those of you who know this already, I just assume you’re all moronic assholes, since that’s what I encounter 95% of the time in “real” life).

If Guimarães manage to pull this one out, they’ll make it to the group stages of the Champions League for the first time ever. They’ll also join last year’s Portuguese League champions Porto and second place finishers Sporting in the round of 32. Guimarães would probably have their asses handed to them in group play, but the amount of money and prestige that comes with this type of competition is immense, especially to a club like Guimarães.

Even though my favorite club is fresh off a Champions League final heart breaker, nothing gets me going more from a club football standpoint than to hear the music below. Hopefully the theme will ring in the ears of Manny’s men after the final whistle is blown tonight in Basel.

** Vitória de Guimarães’ new biggest fan Jose Mourinho watched the Portuguese side tie FC Basel 1492 When Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue 0 – 0 at home on Wednesday in the first leg of the third round Champions League qualifiers.

** In UEFA Cup qualifier (”we’re talking WAY the hell away from anything substantial” qualifier) action, Braga managed a 1 – 0 win at home over HŠK Zrinjski Mostar on a 68th minute goal from Roland Linzzzzzzzzz

** Waking up now we have the opening match (no points at stake) of the 2008/2009 Portuguese Season with Sporting facing off against Porto in the Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira on Saturday. A slightly Sporting-slanted preview of the match by an extremely witty and handsome blogger can be found here.

** Finally, Benfica and Inter played in the inaugural Eusebio Cup match today in Lisbon. As I hurry to finish this, the match ended in a 0 – 0 draw and Nuno Gomes just converted a shootout penalty to tie it at 3 – 3(I know, sounds weird, but sound it out to yourself: “Nu-no Gomes sc-or-ed”.

Enjoy the weekend and do your best to catch the Sporting v Porto match. You’ll love it. I guarantee it. As a matter of fact, if you DON’T love it, e-mail one of the site bosses and they’ve told me they’ll send you over an e-mail from some Nigerian fellow that will give you a part of his inheritance. I just sent him my social security, bank account, and credit card numbers and I can’t wait to get me a piece of that sweet money pie!

Champions League Third Round Qualifier First Leg, Second Set, Fifth Iteration, Level Nine Gannon’s Dungeon (That’s right: Zelda shout out, bitches): Guimarães 0 – 0 FC Parsley – Guimarães had two legitimate shouts for penalty kicks and I can’t believe at least one wasn’t given. Both teams played standard issue cagey boring first leg football. Guimarães looked the better side and had more attacking impetus. The fact that they didn’t concede an away goal makes me feel that they’ll be okay when they visit the Spice Rack in two weeks time.

UEFA Cup Second Qualifying Round: Braga v. HŠK Zrinjski Mostar Today, 19:45 Local — As a result of their Intertoto Cup win, Braga earned the right to make a run at qualifying for an ass whipping by AC Milan. The first leg will be contested today at home against last year’s fourth place team from the Premier League of Bosnia and Herzegovina, HŠK Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

It’s hard to care about the Consolation Cup as it is. You want me to legitimately preview a match that’s light years away from the final? Pssshhh.

Lift up your League and Champions League trophies! We lift them up to Jose…

An E-Mail Reading from Jose to the Guimarinians:

“I [God] have always respected and admired the club [Guimarães] and its relation with its supporters. Vitoria is a huge club with a huge heart. Its fans are its heart. The Mourinho would like to return to the stadium, hopefully this year in the Champions League.

I think Portugal deserves three teams in the Champions League and I feel that Vitoria have the quality to beat FC Basel. I’m going to be rooting for them; rooting for Portugal. Good luck Vitoria. I’ll be waiting to kick the ever loving shit out of you for you in the Champions League.” Amen.

Guimarães defend the home fort against FC Basel 867-5309 tomorrow at the only time UEFA ever seems to be able to wake up for: 20:45 local. You can tell the honchos over at European Football’s governing body are fucking enamored with this match up, as the paragraph summary concluding their previews of all the Third Qualifying Round matches ends with the enthralling description which I’ve done you the favor of highlighting below:

“The teams triumphant in the previous round will not want to stumble now, least of all Anorthosis Famagusta FC, who can become the first team from Cyprus to reach the group stage if they progress past Olympiacos CFP. Another Greek outfit, Panathinaikos FC, visit AC Sparta Praha, while FBK Kaunas take on Aalborg BK in Denmark, still buzzing after beating Rangers FC. FC BATE Borisov also sprung a surprise by overcoming RSC Anderlecht and they meet PFC Levski Sofia in Bulgaria while free-scoring Fenerbahçe SK are up against FK Partizan. Elsewhere, NK Dinamo Zagreb will want to shine away to FC Shakhtar Donetsk and FC Basel 1893 visit Vitória SC.” (from UEFA.com)

Gripping! I personally don’t know why they’re even playing these matches since The Special One has already made Guimarães The Chosen Ones. But hey, I guess we can turn off “Olhos de Água” for a few minutes and watch some meaningful Portuguese football in the middle of the week, can’t we?

Given their massive changes in both coach and personnel, Benfica have had an even rustier pre-season than a given club would be accustomed to. The rust was compounded by these sweeping changes and they’ve looked lethargic, out of place, and incoherent for much of their time on the pitch this Summer.

While Benfica got out to an early 2-0 lead, their play was still somewhat disjointed and aided by the fact that Guimarães looked more like Intertoto Cup competitors rather than a playoff away from the group stages of the Champions League. Both teams will have to get their shit together if they plan on finishing anywhere near European competition this year as their performances thus far in the prologue to the season have been thoroughly underwhelming.

José Antonio Reyes On His Way to Da Luz — In a move that would signal their tenth addition this summer, Benfica are apparently ready to announce the acquisition of José Antonio Reyes on loan from Atlético Madrid. Benfica threw their hat into the Reyes chase a bit late but their interest had a bit more clout due to the fact that they still were “owed” something of this nature through the transfer of See-Mow Sabrosa to Atlético last year.

Reyes adds to Benfica boss Quique Flores’ attacking options, making him by my count, the seventy eighth winger added this Summer and the ninety-fifth possible attacking option at Flores’ disposal in the coming season. In all seriousness, Reyes is another pseudo-gamble that Benfica are taking on guys who peaked at one point or another and were tapped to be the “Next” (fill in appropriate fellow countryman’s name who was awesome in his prime) but never got to become one iota as good as the players they had been compared to.

Portuguese League Offside A Changin’ – In case you haven’t noticed, and judging by the site view statistics , you haven’t, the Portuguese Liga branch of The Offside is in expansion mode. Due to my fantastic blogging about the Beautiful Game from the cute little nation next to Spain, Daryl has come to his senses and finally splashed out on hiring some club-specific bloggers. Over the weekend, an Evil Empire (Porto) blog was added and I’m going to become… wait for it… the new official Sporting blogger!!!! YAY!! CLAP IT UP, SLUTS! I figured that the Porto guy couldn’t be allowed to run riot over the boards with his “We’re 20 points in front” bullshit, so I had to provide a foil to him in the form of a Sporting blog. Daryl is setting up the Sporting branch as we speak and I’ll be there with incoherent ramblings as soon as he hits my mailbox with a WordPress username and password.

The Portuguese section will hopefully expand to include a Benfiquista at the very least and I see the “Portuguese Football League” part of the site becoming less team specific and more an organic sounding board for the league as a whole. With targeted team sites, it will allow me to give more focus to the smaller teams and will still feature each club’s European ambitions and results as well as the weekly recaps, league cup competition coverage and other fun stuff all six of you have become accustomed to. I think the team-specific stuff will free me up to not worry too much about reporting on small moves the Big Three make and allow for a development of daily features and hopefully make for some fun cross-club sniping.

I want to thank Daryl for tripling my current pay ($0 * 3 = $0) in taking on yet another fantastic responsibility here and giving me more stuff to do on my computer at work that can pass as legitimate money-making endeavors for whenever the boss passes by. The Offside truly is the gift that just keeps on givin’.

Therefore, while there is a great amount of money and prestige that comes to teams that simply qualify, for me these competitions don’t take on any serious meaning until the best of the best are involved. In the same vein, far be it from me to deny Portuguese teams their recognition, so it is my blog-given obligation to point out that last year’s surprise third place finishers Vitória Guimarães will be facing off against either IFK Göteborg of Sweden or FC Basel 1893 of Switzerland in the third qualifying round for the Champions League. The winner of the home and away playoff will then be thrown to the wolves and pray for a third place group finish in the Champions League so they lose at some stage to AC Milan in this year’s UEFA Cup.

Braga were also involved in UEFA draw proceedings today. Their Intertoto Cup win slid them into the second qualifying round draw for the runner up UEFA Cup. They found out that they have to deal with NK Zrinjski, a side that finished fourth in this past season’s top flight of Bosnia-Herzegovinian football. I’ve cleared my schedule for August 14th and 28th for these can’t miss ties. Maybe you’ll join me in watching these matches and double the television audience for the encounters by becoming the second non-lobotomized person watching via the tube.

Somebody wake me when these teams are having their asses handed to them by either Scolari and Co or Ronaldinho. Until then, enjoy your weekend. I get to grill for my six-year-old nephew’s pool party tomorrow, so even if you’re in prison on “kitchen detail” tossing salad or catching a disease like malaria, I guarantee you’re having a better weekend than me. Enjoy it.

O Maestro then opened his summer overhaul by bringing Quique Flores, a boss with Champions League pedigree and most recently manager of Spanish Primera side Valencia. With Flores on board and ready to roll, Ol’ Number 10 hit the transfer market hard. With Maniche’s brother, Portuguese international Jorge Ribeiro already signed prior to him coming on board to strengthen the defense, he brought in largely unproven midfielder Hassan Yebda from French side Le Mans on a free.

Then, after losing on-loan Cristian Rodriguez to Porto, Rui hit up Spanish minnows Real Madrid and managed to wrangle winger Javier Balboa from them for four million Euros. While in Spain, he also secured the signature of Portuguese international attacking midfielder Carlos Martins from Recreativo Huelva. Still unsatisfied with his summer spending spree, Rui traveled down to South America and stole away 18-year old striker Jonathan Urretavizcaya from River Plate to inject some youth into the squad.

Today, his transfer tempest probably began to wind down as he secured the services of Argentinian international midfielder Pablo Aimar from Real Zaragoza in a swap which sees 6.5 million Euros and promising young Portuguese winger Fábio Coentrão headed in the other direction. Zaragoza have the option to sign Fábio Coentrão permanently after this season.

So, the money’s been spent. The attack has certainly been fortified. Beloved Rui Costa is at the helm. Quique Flores is going to be stalking the sidelines. Is this, “new” Benfica ready to restore the luster which was reserved for the “old” teams?

While the matches are obviously played on the pitch and not in the transfer market, I’d still say that the moves Benfica have made over the summer do a decent job of showing its massive supporter base that they won’t take fourth place and the UEFA Cup lying down. At least if this is all a big huge fuck up, the Portuguese media will probably initially be very reluctant to heap criticism on a national hero such as Rui Costa. Initially reluctant, that is.

This decision puts to rest a long, protracted, and frankly somewhat embarrassing dragging through the European mud of Portuguese Football. As if it isn’t shitty enough for Portuguese football across Europe, the poor performances put forth in international club competition recently (especially the past year) are going to lead to us losing key spots in European tournaments in the coming seasons.

While the Portuguese football tribunals punished Porto in the most absurd manner for their bribery scandal, it’s time to let sleeping dogs rot in the gutter and move on. Besides, the best way to watch your favorite players on your most favorite of Portuguese teams excel in Europe is to wait for them to be sold larger teams who have a virtual stranglehold on the Champions League. Haven’t you figured that out yet?