The Portuguese Primeira Liga started this weekend and showed the fans a little bit of what they can expect for the upcoming season, especially when it comes to “the big three”: Benfica, Porto and Sporting.
2014-15 Primeira Liga Preview
Benfica
Benfica are the Primeira Liga champions and, after a poor pre-season, they won their first game of the league 2-0 against Paços de Ferreira, after defeating Rio Ave in the penalties for the Portuguese Super Cup.
Jorge Jesus is building a team almost from scratch, relying on Luisão, Enzo Perez, Gaitan and Lima to help him in the struggle, and they are getting better each game, but that probably won’t be enough to make it all the way through in first place as they did last season, and that will only happen if Porto and Sporting struggle to play well as a team as well.
Porto
Last season FC Porto struggled to get to 3rd, but this season Julen Lopetegui is commanding the more expensive squad of the Primeira Liga full of great players.
Porto won their first Primeira Liga game against Marítimo 2-0 and showed all the individual talent they have in the squad, but defensively there was still something missing, and even though they spent most of the game playing in Marítimo’s half of the pitch, they didn’t play well as a team. Porto also missed Christian Tello, who came from Barcelona on a loan deal and is the FC Porto’s most mediatic deal of the summer.
Sporting
Sporting CP were runners-up last season and the President Bruno de Carvalho assured they would challenge for the title this season, but the match against Académica and the problems with Marcos Rojo and Islam Slimani (two of the most important players of the team last year) are presenting some problems for Sporting this season.
Islam Slimani and Marcos Rojo missed practice to force their transfer deals in the same week the Primeira Liga would start – they couldn’t have chosen a worse time – and made the coach, Marco Silva, throw in Naby Sarr- a young defender who came from Lyon- because Eric Dier left as well, and also Freddy Montero went in to take over Slimani’s place (Freddy Montero hasn’t scored a goal in an official match since December).
William Carvalho is also being chased by several big European clubs and might leave the team as well. Carvalho was the most important Sporting player last season and is a player Sporting can’t afford to lose. That being said, he will only leave if another club reaches the 45M € fee.
But there are also players coming in. In the 20M € Rojo transfer deal, Nani came on a loan deal and Sporting will not have to pay his salary as Man United will cover it. Nani’s return to Sporting brought many excitement to the fans who are expecting to see big things coming from his feet as they know his talent from when he was still playing for the Sporting leões.
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