F.C. Porto – Continue to raid Argentina and decided to backdoor Benfica on Cristian Rodríguez for a seven million Euro transfer. Benfica’s been dragging Porto and Portuguese football through the proverbial mud in Europe by sending every lawyer possible to argue their Champions League case to no avail, so Porto must enjoy the fact that they got some sort of small revenge here (aside from the fact that Benfica’s attempts were futile).

Ricky “Play Me Phil, I’m Better Than Simão” Quaresma is being feverishly linked with a move away from the Dragão. The most commonly mentioned suitors are Inter (who deny this connection over and over again) but Juventus, Chelsea, and Liverpool are apparently still in the running for the Cigano’s services.

Paulo Assunção used the Webster Law (long story short: player old enough and contracted long enough can buy out remaining part of agreement to become free) to scoot out early and is still looking for suitors with Atletico Madrid apparently leading the chase.

Sporting — Signed away Portuguese international striker Helder Postiga from Porto for 3.5 million Euros to add depth to an already decent strike force. Signed midfielder Izmailov to a long term deal as well as left back Grimi and Portuguese international defender (this past Euro excepted) Marco Caneira.

International midfielders Miguel Veloso and captain João Moutinho are constantly being linked with moves abroad. Veloso has admitted a liking for Milan while Moutinho is allegedly getting the standard sack rubbing from almost every big club in Europe. At least one of them will be gone by the time the season actually starts if not both. Emerging Sporting Midfielder = European Orgy.

Benfica – Condemned to the UEFA Cup this year, Benfica are trying to make some serious moves in the transfer and PR departments.

They opened the transfer season by signing midfielder Rui Costa up as their Football Director and he brought in seasoned boss Quique Flores. Aside from losing out on Cristian Rodríguez, they’ve brought in a number of intriguing signings. International new guy Jorge Ribeiro has been brought in as a defensive reinforcement. Carlos Martins was also signed as a replacement for Cristian Rodríguez and, in my opinion, probably a better player for the future.

Benfica are also, as of this writing, apparently moments away from announcing the five million Euro purchase of Javier Balboa, a winger from Real Madrid. Given the aggressive improvements and presence of Rui Costa, I’m happy with the fact that Benfica have not taken their UEFA Cup assignment laying down and are looking to restore the luster of years past.

We’ll hit on some of the smaller clubs and what to expect from the two new guys in town in the coming days. Until then… You better work.

Benfica – “Oh no, not” Nuno Gomes, “Striker” (Portugal) / Petit, Midfielder (France Portugal) / Quim, Goalkeeper (Portugal) / Kostas Katsouranis, Midfielder (Greece)

Boavista — Jorge Ribeiro, Defender (Portugal) Note: Ribeiro has since been sold to Benfica, but he played the whole season at Boavista, so I figured I’d stick him here. Plus, it makes it seem as though more teams are sending players.

Braga — Roland Linz, Striker (Austria)

Porto — Bruno Alves, Defender (Portugal) / Ricardo Quaresma, Winger (Portugal) / Raul Meireles, Midfielder (Portugal) / Hélder Postiga, Striker (Portugal) / Bosingwa, Defender (Portugal). Notes: Postiga played part of the season on loan to Panathinaikos in Greece. Also, Bosingwa played the whole season for Porto but has since been sold to English side Chelsea (yay!)

Sporting — Rui Patricio, Goalkeeper (Portugal) / João Moutinho, Midfielder (Portugal) / Miguel Veloso, Midfielder (Portugal)

Predictably, the best team in the league is sending the most players. The best team in the Euro is incidentally taking the most players from the league. So there.

Instead of doing a weekly recap and catching up like a bazillion(how did this word not get caught by spell check?) jornadas, why don’t we just act as if I never left you? It’s sort of like when I broke up with an ex and then got together three months later. Things were said like “Oh, no, I didn’t even NOTICE any other gals while we were apart, honey!” But we know the truth. Things took place then like things took place in the Liga while I was gone, so let’s do a before and after shot, shall we?

Before Greg Left: Porto were dominating the league at the top of the table.
Now That Greg’s Back: Porto are dominating the league at the top of the table by an even bigger margin.

The only major, really newsworthy change is that Sporting have managed to plant their asses in fifth (FIFTH!) place behind Porto, Benfica, and the two Vitorias (Guimaraes and Setubal). On the flip side of that poopy development, Sporting are the only Portuguese team still alive in Europe and still capable of a “double” this year, as they’re in the finals of the Carlsberg Cup as well as the round of 16 in the UEFA Cup. I don’t know if you count off brand cups when saying a team captured a “double.” Maybe we can call it a “discount” double. Yeah, that’ll work: it’s catchy, alliterative, and condescending all at the same time (sort of like when I call my wife a ‘brainless broad’ because it sounds so much better and gets me in less trouble than ’stupid female dog’). Okay, okay, before my wife actually sees this and decides the couch is a good place for me to sleep tonight, here’s the whole table, as we stand right now:

1st – Porto — 57 **Champions League**
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2nd – Benfica — 41 **Champions League**
3rd – V.Guimarães — 41 **Champions League, Qualifiers**
4th – V.Setúbal — 37 **UEFA Cup**
5th – Sporting — 37 **UEFA Cup**
6th – Braga — 33
7th – Belenenses — 33
8th – Marítimo — 31
9th – Boavista — 31
10th – Nacional — 29
11th – E.d.Amadora — 25
12th – Académica — 23
13th – Naval — 23
14th – Leixões — 21
15th – P.Ferreira — 19 **Relegation**
16th – Leiria — 9 **Relegation**

For those who don’t know and are confused by asterisks with information in them, the top two finishers qualify for the group stages of the Champions League. Third place goes to the third round qualifiers of the Champions League. Fourth and fifth goes to the whogivesash *AHEM* UEFA Cup, as well as the winner of the newly established Carlsberg Cup. At this point in time, Sporting and V.Setubal are both qualified through league position and playing each other in the Carlsberg Cup final. If the league were to end today, the third UEFA Cup spot would go to the sixth place team (Braga).

There are no league matches this weekend due to a bunny with colored eggs and chocolate coming to town. The Carlsberg Cup final between Manchester United’s Minor League team and Jose Mourinho’s hometown team will take place this Saturday in the Algarve at 8:30 PM local time. We’ll sneak a peak at that tomorrow. Until then, Kisses ALL AROUND! Thanks again to everyone who welcomed me back so warmly, I’ve missed you like the deserts miss the rain.

Almost as if he knew what was taking place, Daryl emailed me to see if I’d help out over on the World Cup Blog with the push to the Euro 2008. Since he begged and pleaded with me rather vociferously, I decided to take him up on the offer of the National Team duties over on the World Cup Blog and also mentioned that I may take this blog back if he delivered me a case of Fun Dip and a francesinha every Friday afternoon. After discussing the logistics of shipping a gravy-soaked, cheese coated sandwich cross country, I obliged and begrudgingly (had my username and password still dutifully memorized) signed on to get back to work.

Therefore I hope, much like Napoleon when he returned to Paris from exile on Elba, that my eleven faithful readers will somehow find their way back into my arms. If you’re new to the site in the past 4 or 5 months, go on back and see what I’m all about and realize what you’ve been missing. Then become part of the inner circle. You’ll love it, I promise.

All joking aside, it’s awesome to be back and I’ll see you back here for BWINLiga fun and over on the Portugal National Team site for the obvious… News on the soon-to-be 2008 Euro champions! Força Portugal!!

Portuga Euro Two-Fer Yay! — What the hell was that? I was beginning to forget what winning in these qualifiers actually looks like. I’ll dispense with too much analysis and recap because I basically missed that boat by not being around. 2-0 at Azerbaijan and 2-1 at Kazakhstan aren’t exactly the most sparkling of results, but they’ll do. After seeing that England will likely not even qualify, I’m not going to complain about mediocre wins away against far inferior opponents. I’d rather just take the six points and shut my mouth. I’m glad they gave some well-deserved burn to Makukula in the Kazakhstan game which obviously paid dividends. After the scoring by Makukula and Hugo Almeida in the first contest, I can’t see why Scolari would waste time calling No-No Goals up any further for “service” to his country. The youth continue to impress and Miguel Veloso looks ready to be a regular in the midfield. He composed himself very well and did not play as if it were his first foray onto the international stage. Overall, we’re 2nd and can’t complain too much. We should grind out the last two qualifiers and all the hub-bub over not making the finals now seems like it is probably a thing of the past.

Carlsberg Cup Extravaganza Weekend! aka Porto’s Time Off to Rest Before Resuming Domination – Eight teams remain in the Carlsblah blah blah. Here are dee fixtures, with who I think will win each match in bold. The four winners will play in a round robin format which will lead to a final between two teams (how novel). The winner will then be decided by whichever team scores more goals (another novel concept).

October 20th, 2:00 PM EST — Sporting v. Fátima
October 20th, 4:00 PM EST — Benfica v. V.Setubal
October 21st, 11:00 AM EST — Penafiel v. U.d.Leiria
October 21st, 11:00 AM EST – Portimonense v. Beira-Mar

Enjoy the weekend, I’ll see you back on Monday and we’ll hit the ground running with a full week’s worth of Portuguese footballin’. I missed you all dearly. Keep it real. Kisses ALL AROUND!!

While I’m away, catch the Azerbaijan game tomorrow as well as the game against Team Borat in Kazakhstan. They should win both of these games running away. Here’s how I hope they’ll line up for these matches:

Cristiano Ronaldo – Hugo Almeida (see picture @ top left) – Ricardo Quaresma
João Moutinho – Deco – Maniche
Miguel – Ricky Carvalho – Bruno Alves – Paulie Ferreira
Ricardo

If those three up front can’t notch 4-5 goals in each game, then they should just pack it in and forget about Euro 2008. I’ll miss you all dearly. I’ll see you again a week from today. While I’m out, I have this guy below guarding my blog, so don’t try to mess with my turf. Força Portugal and all that jazz.

Mourinho’s Gone – Unless this is the first football news site you look at when you wake, you know this already. If this isn’t the first site you see and you still didn’t know this, you need to start going somewhere else for your world football news. I’m a Chelsea fan and a Chop, so this item’s double trouble for me. I don’t know where he ends up, but I know he’ll get an assload of money. He was already being paid 5 million pounds a year at the Chels. I hope this turns into the Perfect Special One Storm and he slides into the Portugal job, as I predicted he would (albeit after the Euro and a Chels Champions League victory). I certainly hope NOT to see him on another club’s sidelines, and would love to have him at least still be a positive and productive force on the side of the Portuguese Convoked Ones so I can continue to root for one of the planet’s biggest badasses around. I’m completely floored by this and hope that it doesn’t create a mass talent exodus out of the club in the coming 12-18 months.

Scolari Suspended Four Games – UEFA suspended National Team boss Big Phil four games for his altercation with Dragutinovic in the 1-1 disappointment against Serbia last week. I personally don’t give a shit about this since I’d love to see how the team perform without him on the sidelines anyways (and with the newly single guy above in the dugout instead). LandPhil plans to appeal.

Sporting 0 – 1 Man United – Sporting looked the better side for about 75% of this match. Nani got a relatively negative response with whistles every time that he touched the ball that dissipated as the match wore on. Cristiano Ronaldo, the goalscorer on a fantastic diving header, got the usual royal wiener cleaning by the crowd. Liedson went close early on but was parried away by an outstretched Van Der Sar who was my Man of the Match. Yannick Djalo, whose start I had lobbied for, was largely ineffective and when he was on the ball, looked overwhelmed. João Moutinho was invisible for the majority of the match and most of the effective service forward was actually sparked by Miguel Veloso. I felt this game contrasted the Porto-Liverpool game in the fact that both teams had an understood respect for one an other and played as such. This game is the epitome of the type of match that is won by champions. Premiership title holders Manchester United were clearly the lesser side on the day but still managed to take a whole three points from the match.

UEFA Cup Matches – Oh stop. Go back a few articles and read what I wrote about the fact that there’s still 14875 teams involved and we can’t really get too excited about this just yet. What I said then is still true. As with all things that I say and write: they become instant gospel.

I have to go buy a few more boxes of tissues for my “Missing You Mourinho” tears and help Abramovich pull his head out of his ass. I also have to find someone else on Chelsea for my wife to have a crush on so that she’ll watch the games with me.

I don’t care if Dragutinović informed Scolari of some motor boating he did inside Mrs. Scolari’s birth canal, like I said yesterday, if Portugal were winning/dominating the way they should have been, Scolari wouldn’t have been so compelled to try and remove the pasta sauce stain from Dragutinović’s face. Rather, Big Phil’s hand could have simply shot towards the scoreboard and let Dragutinović know that, in spite of his using Mrs. Scolari’s most intimate of areas as his own personal marina, Portugal were still winning 4-1 and nanny nanny poo poo.

In short, if Philly’s boys were getting results, fans and the press wouldn’t care if the Bulging Brazuca stood stark naked in his technical area while getting fellated by a hippopotamus. Winning is the ultimate cure-all tonic for just about anything. Unless, of course, you subscribe to Serbian boss Javier Clemente’s philosophy on winning and Big Phil: “I can’t understand how [Scolari] who has won the World Cup cannot stand to lose. If he isn’t capable of doing this he should change jobs.” Yeah, that’s what we want! A coach who’s good at taking losses! He won the World Cup because he can’t stand to lose. This is probably the dumbest, most nonsensical comment I’ve read in quite some time.

Enough about the presently overwhelmingly mediocre national team. There’s a new jornada on the horizon! This week sees a battle for first place take… umm… place between Porto and perennial juggernaut Marítimo. Domingos Paciencia (shown here trying to surreptitiously smell his fingers post ass scratching) makes his managerial debut for Academica against Pacos de Ferreira. And…other than these two SCORCHING HOT story lines, this jornada’s fixtures are leaving me feeling an overwhelming sense of apathy going into the weekend. However, I shall overcome Lady Apathy’s attempt to woo me and present you with this weekend’s schedule as well as FixtureFacts 2.4, with each club’s founding year in parenthesis.

-=Jornada 4=- I haven’t moved, so all times are still Eastern.

Friday, September 14 @ 4:15 PM — V. Setúbal (1910) v. Braga-doccio (1921)

Saturday, September 15 @ 12:00 PM — Boavista (1903) v. Leixões (1907)
Saturday, September 15 @ 2:15 PM — FC Porto (1893) v. Marítimo (1910) **Ugghh.. Match Of the Week**
Saturday, September 15 @ 4:15 PM — Benfica (1904) v. Naval (1893)

Sunday, September 16 @ 11:00 AM — Académica (1887) v. Paços de Ferreira (1950)
Sunday, September 16 @ 1:00 PM — E.d.Amadora (1932) v. Sporting (1906)
Sunday, September 16 @ 3:15 PM — Belelelelelenenses (1919) v. U.d.Leiria (1966)

Monday, September 17 @ 2:45 PM — V. Guimarães (1922) v. Nacional (1910)

This is all for now. Have a fantastic weekend and hopefully all of you get laid, you know, if you’re in to that sort of stuff. If not, then hopefully you rise out of the depths of your parents’ basement and make it to a bar to catch one of the games listed above. Sometimes a good match can end up being like 1/100,000th as good as sex.

Ironic as it might seem, Portugal’s matches are turning into microcosmic epitomes of the team. The game is great, like the team, but it is never seen through to the end. Portugal can’t finish up front and they can’t finish off a team in a given match. Put simply, they don’t have any consistent strikers who can hit the back of the net (and why hasn’t 6′ 3″ monster Hugo Almedia given a fair shot?).

Portugal can barely hit anything lately, as evidenced when Big Empty Phil managed to miss Dragutinović’s face with a punch from about a foot away. This act was simply disgraceful. As of late, we’ve seen too many footballers and people on the pitch overreacting to relatively innocuous incitements (see: Zinedine Zidane). If the team Little Vacuous were putting on the pitch was producing results, perhaps instead of raising his fist to Dragutinović, he would be able to raise his pointer finger and show Dragutinović that Portugal were winning where it counted, on the scoreboard. The great equalizer in any argument on the field of sport is simply to turn and say “Yeah, well my mother may have screwed half of your team, but according to the scoreboard, you still suck.” Perhaps if Zidane were staked to a three goal lead, he could have simply informed Marco Materazzi of his team’s deficit instead of trying to see if he could impale the Italian defender with his head. My point is, rather plainly, that teams who win or are winning don’t lose their cool. Players on these teams rarely act out. If Petite Felipe needs to defend his players on the pitch, then the players themselves need a gut check and to look each other in the eyes and figure out who they can and can’t go to war with when the time comes.

Portugal may have to come to the realization that maybe we peaked with the 2004 Euro and the 2006 World Cup. Maybe the expectations going forward that were generated as a result of those strong showings were ones of false hope. There are four matches left to play, two away and the final two at home. Three of the four final matches are against the bottom three teams in the group. If Portugal continue to draw and play at the current level, we may have to come to terms with one ugly, previously inconceivable fact: Maybe we’re just not that good.

Instead of some stupid rant and further analysis of the match against Serbia that will all be pointless after it’s played today, I figured I’d post two pictures I took from the last World Cup. The first is a picture of my drunk and soiled friend with his shirt off. The second is how filled the streets got once we heard the final whistle and Portugal defeated the Dutch. Hopefully this Euro will bring similar celebration. See you tomorrow.