Who’s Your Dady?

I’m officially going on a hiatus from predicting games. The only ones I seem to get right are the Porto and Sporting games. Picking those teams to win lately is like picking the sky to be blue. Belenenses continued their meteoric rise from out of the depths of last year’s relegation scandal to make the Taça finals and take fourth place in the Liga. They defeated Braga 2-1 in extra time and did it mostly on the back of their Cape Verde playmaker Dady.

Dady broke the 0-0 deadlock a mere five minutes in with a sublime run and chip over Braga keeper Paulo Santos (of obscenely tight-fitting keeper shirt fame; see his long lost brother here). As of late, a Dady goal has meant a Belenenses win and this match would be no different from their previous five games.

On the 35th minute, Maciel brought the game level off a nice pass from Wender. While Wender facilitated his team’s equalizer, he also supplied the home side with a man advantage when he handled the ball for a second yellow. For the uninitiated, in football you can’t use your hands and yellow + yellow = red. Braga’s refusal to show up for their youth soccer training hurt them even further when Frechaut touched the ball in the penalty area off of a Dady cross. Ze Pedro converted the penalty and set off pandemonium in the Restelo.

This sets up a May 27th final showdown with Sporting. I won’t bother picking Sporting to win the final; I don’t want to transfer the curse to a team I actually WANT to win.

Category: Porto, Sporting, Taca de Portugal

Tags: Belenenses, Braga, Cape Verde, Dady, Frechaut, Paulo Santos, Porto, Sporting, Taca de Portugal, Wender, Ze Pedro

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