Ljubinko Drulović got to know both sides of the fence that tonight separates the national champion, Benfica, and the winner of the last Portuguese Cup, FC Porto, in the fight for the first trophy of the season, the Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira .
He played ten years in Portugal, eight of them with the dragons and another two with the eagles, and despite seeing the two teams at different times, he expects nothing less than a game “in which the coaches don’t even need to motivate the players”.
“Everyone wants to win and everyone wants to play, so it’s going to be a very interesting game,” he said. TSF the left-handed man who has five Portuguese Super Cups to his credit.
Waiting for an “excellent football match with two great teams”, Drulović does not stop pointing out that it is “very important for Portuguese football that this type of match continues to attract a lot of people to the stadium and with a lot of euphoria, they are fans of the Benfica or are fans of FC Porto”, especially in an environment of “good rivalry, which is good for football itself”.
Without favorites for this, which is the first game of the official season for the two teams, he predicts that it will be “small details that will decide who will be the winner” of a “fairly disputed and difficult” game.
And the details start with the bench, especially with FC Porto, led by Sérgio Conceição, who has been doing an “excellent job” and “is a man of the house, so to speak”.
“He is the coach with the longest standing at FC Porto, he identifies well with the ideas of the club itself and knows the house very well,” says Drulović, who sees FC Porto as “always the favorite to win everything”.
“FC Porto has a lot of quality in this type of match”
Waiting for some “very competitive and very strong dragons this year”, between the two official reinforcements up to now -Fran Navarro and Nico González-, the former striker born in the former Yugoslavia brings the ember to his favorite part of the field: “I hope that this Navarro integrates very well because last year, at Gil Vicente, he had an excellent season and is an excellent player”.
About the blue and white position in tonight’s game -played from 20:45 and with TSF report -, does not fail to note the “positive, very positive tradition” of FC Porto in games of this nature: “Even in my time, I remember some games that we managed to win, FC Porto has a lot of quality in this type of game and normally wins this trophy.”
“Certainly this time will not be the exception, FC Porto will do everything to win”, predicts the former player, without forgetting that there is also “an excellent team” on the other side, that of Benfica, and that from there “a very interesting match to watch, mainly for people who like football”.
“Maybe they have an even stronger team than in the past”
And it is precisely on the other side of the field where Drulović sees a rival who, if he was already strong last season, has done so even more with the reinforcements this summer, highlighting one in particular: Ángel Di María.
The 35-year-old Argentinian returned to La Luz after finishing his contract with Juventus and leaves the former striker in no great doubt: “He started very well.”
In his favor is the fact that he already “knows the house”, so “adaptation is very easy for him”, so much so that “he came in and began to score goals and [a fazer] assists”.
“He is a great player, despite his age, he has a lot of quality” and he was joined by another player who did not go unnoticed by Drulović: the Turkish midfielder Orkun Kökçü, who is “an excellent player”.
And although Benfica came to this super cup after two losses in the preseason – 0-2 against Burnley and 1-2 against Feyenoord -, he does not fail to note that the team “was playing very well” and is “excellent”. without a doubt”, in addition to having “moral, because he was the champion”.
After calculating the transfer market, Drulović argues that the reds “maybe this year they will have an even stronger team than last year, more creative.”
Whatever the fall of the Super Cup, after it begins a championship that is expected “once again very disputed between three great teams from Portugal.”
“SC Braga also has an excellent team, but normally FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting, in this case, will definitely decide who will be the next champion,” he adds.
The Cândido de Oliveira Super Cup will be played this Wednesday, starting at 8:45 p.m., at the Estádio Municipal de Aveiro, with TSF report and minute tracking tsf.pt.
Source: TSF
