Pressure for this one, pressure for that one, it’s more like we’re at the table with a boiling potato that scalds hand in hand. But what is that, pressure?, that feeling that you question whether you belong to who before a football game when we spend an existence playing at something where, in the end, the result is the same for everyone. One didn’t have to wait for Einstein’s theory to know that almost everything is relative, kicks to the ball included, whose weight they will have in the life of a man who has just lost his mother myrrh; or even disappear for a while.
When, on that day, a scalded tubercle was placed on his lap that was more literal and less figurative than the supposed pressure felt by the coaches, leaving him with a mere two training sessions to give twenty-something players before Benfica faced FC Porto again, it soon proved how little football matters when life remembers to slap us wildly. Even more, if, on top of that, the time given to a coach called urgently rhymes with his nickname.
There was very little for Nélson Veríssimo to mess with big things in the team that had hundreds of practices, lectures and instructional shouts with the previous coach, committed to three centrals, in quick escapes to attack with the ball and faithful references to each one following his man when Benfica had to defend. But for the second classic in eight days against an opponent who goes on five years of consistency under the same orders, Veríssimo changed the system to avoid the repetition of a movie.
Benfica started with a line of four defenders, four players ahead and two forwards, a practical classicism that left the team with the rare presence of Gonçalo Ramos at the front and André Almeida at the left flank — the possible solution for a lame squad if, one day, I happened not to have Grimaldo’s ideas and calm with the ball. In this sequel to the Cup game, FC Porto’s first approach to the opponent’s area was, again, a lateral throw from Zaidu and, in the hangover, the first shot (2′) of the game came from Pêpê, the substitute for the best player in the field from a week ago.
The invisible beast took him away from this match in which, for about 20 minutes, the changed Benfica does better than his pre-Christmas version. This time, a team is born in the derby with the players closer to each other to advance on the field with the ball, with Gonçalo Ramos or Yaremchuk dropping a few meters in any ball possession, joining Weigl and João Mario to act as a wall that returns the ball to anyone who appears near him, facing the goal. These were the reference points that the team was trying to play with, rather than arriving.
But, as the team always wanted to do it with short passes, it invited the type of pressure that FC Porto feeds on: strong, close to the area and immediately squeezing any reception of the ball made backwards by opponents. And when Taremi couldn’t spot the shot over André Almeida’s sliding body, in the area, after Pêpê pierced through two bodies and watched him, the game there gradually lost its balance. Not so early, not as sharply as the week before, but every time Pêpê accelerated from the outside to the inside (just like Luis Díaz) towards space on the backs of the centrals, or that Otávio and Fábio Vieira showed up to receive on foot and then set sail in small diagonals to fetch passes in the space behind the wingers.
Even having more discretion with the ball, missing fewer passes and connecting more lasting plays, Benfica suffered when they lost it — losing it more often — and the mistakes of the past returned. Again, he reacted slowly to a throw-in, on the left, where Fábio Vieira beat André Almeida, entered the area and scored (34′) 1-0 between Vlachodimos’ legs. Three minutes went by and, again reacting late to a runaway ball, he saw FC Porto progress down the same side of the field and Otávio pretend he wanted a foot pass and make a small sprint towards the touchline, from where he crossed the ball to Pêpê appears in front of a Gilberto facing the goal and behind the back of a Morato who is only worried and with his eyes fixed on the place where the cross came from.
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The 2-0 hit Benfica too much, which seconds before the score was agreed had Yaremchuk shooting against Diogo Costa at the end of an area-to- area transition started in Weigl and with a stop in Rafa, in one of the few times the players white and blues were passive in the way that reds like to take advantage of a recovered ball. The lack of effectiveness condemned Benfica to precipitating two goals conceded in series, as in the first of the classics of this festive season.
The second half started badly, carrying a long ball through the more porous side of FC Porto where Zaidu lost his area dispute with Gonçalo Ramos and left empty space for Rafa, who approached the area and crossed low towards Yaremchuk. Hidden on the side of Mbemba, the Ukrainian tied (47′) the game, making life easier for the team just before his captain made it difficult.
André Almeida was sent off for the second yellow card he saw for that number of fouls on Otávio, the sparks of a duel that had already come from the first half predicted Benfica to make a living for 40 minutes with only a dozen players on the field and then, literally, the pressure increased. Verissimo took Yaremchuk off to make up the defense with Lázaro and what one would expect to be FC Porto’s backstop against the opponent, pushing into the area and squeezing his players, didn’t happen right away. At least it took a long time to be so.
Joining lines in their half of the field, to try to close the spaces in the center, Benfica still managed, with the ball, to use it calmly and with the players moving as soon as they let it go.
The team discovered spaces within the opponent’s block, João Mário’s rhythm still persisted in a game with a rotation — and duels, second balls and disputes — of those that usually sweep him away from events and had Rafa active in the plays, between waiting glued to the line or going to the center ask for the ball in the back of the midfielders. After a corner, he and Gonçalo Ramos made a quick counter-attack on their own, in which the striker ended up deflecting the ball (63′) from the goalkeeper and only Zaidu prevented it from entering the goal.
It was a phase in which Benfica stiffened, approached the players when they didn’t have the ball and were more vertical using it, as soon as they recovered. But, again, shortly after threatening a goal, the team conceded another, this time in a corner: Vitinha, with her velvet feet, claimed a second ball and immediately touched it to Taremi’s run, who escaped of Vertonghen and finished (69′) 3-1 in the area. The Iranian has not scored in 11 games since October 30th.
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Before the goal, however, the amount of sense that another substitution made by Nélson Veríssimo sounded like the coach’s nickname once again, who took Rafa out of the game to stay with Pizzi, also exchanging Gonçalo Ramos for Taarabt. Benfica lost all the finishing capacity they had in the second half and, until the end, they just tried to reach the opponent’s goal with short and somewhat slow passes, without having someone giving space to change the way the team tried to attack.
And FC Porto, in all the meantime, encouraged the handling of the ball with the skillful tweezers it had in the team, bringing Fábio Vieira de Vitinha together to make their opponents stick in a carousel of passes where those who chased feel the nose for the ball, but really , little touches him. The two increasingly present futures of FC Porto managed the rhythms while Otávio decided when to accelerate (almost scored, even in the end) and there was a rare glimpse of Corona, on the right flank, taking the place of João Mário and Manafá, both out of the game due to injury.
This derby also ended up being FC Porto’s, although it didn’t start because it was so early and outburst as the previous one, in which it left Jorge Jesus’ last Benfica eliminated from the Cup, followed by a superior rival in everything, almost always and in all duels between players. With a linear 4-4-2 and the team closer together because of the way they chose to use the ball, Benfica was also defeated by the new coach, who dared to change the system and strategy, but failed in the individual mistakes of those who played to which he joined his team, in the substitutions that deprived the team of qualities to respond on the field.
Benfica ended the year beaten by one of their rivals, leaving seven points behind the championship leadership while recovering from the aimless chaos with an interim coach, called to work with the team only until the summer and 48 hours from facing this FC Porto , who with this victory confirmed a 2021 in which vivalma won him in the championship. And Benfica, increasingly adrift, only won one of the eight games they played this season and the previous one against FC Porto and Sporting.
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