Another lap, another trip, in this case the 90th. It is already this Friday, in Braga, that a new edition of the I Liga will start, with a new sponsor and an unpleasant novelty compared to recent years: only the champion will have direct access to the new Champions League and only the second will participate in the pre-season. elimination rounds to access an amount of around 100 million euros. There are four confirmed candidates to fight for the title, because this time the ambition was not in the dressing room and Artur Jorge, coach of Braga, assured that he also wants to become national champion, after a season of great quality.
However, it is impossible to talk about the start of the I Liga without mentioning what was seen in the Super Cup, in Aveiro, which is expected to have been no more than an unpleasant taste for what will be a time when places entitled to Euromillions will be less. If the game had some interesting moments, with an uninhibited FC Porto at the start and a skilled and dominating Benfica afterwards, which justified winning the trophy, the truth is that the 40 fouls, the rain of yellow cards and the two sending offs to the end, by the captain and coach of FC Porto – with the spectacle for all to see – no good.
“It gets complicated. Unfortunately it was a return of situations we are used to in Portugal, where there seems to be no emotional containment, no control and where this kind of behavior is not penalized. It was just an example of what our competition is all about, which many people think is stronger, an idea that I do not agree with. I think it has leveled off,” said coach Daúto Faquirá, invited by DN to anticipate the new football year. “We have two leagues within the same one, one with two or three teams with a much greater financial capacity than the other. I may be speaking to myself, but last year’s Benfica, for example, made an impression in the Champions League because it was an atypical season, in which some of the main teams were below their usual level or didn’t even participate. Besides, the level of play in the Super Cup didn’t go further, there was a lot of dedication, but it wasn’t a challenge from another world,” he added.
However, Daúto Faquirá does not have many doubts about the main favourite. “I think Benfica are ahead, it is a team with control and a more complete squad. It is true that they lost Gonçalo Ramos, but they made good acquisitions. Then FC Porto, Sérgio Conceição manages to get a lot out of the team but it’s a lot in the base of will and that doesn’t last forever everything seems very squeezed very based on the determination he imposes which has a good side and a less good side because a team is the image of his coach and this one has a huge commitment but cannot handle the game emotionally Sporting seems stronger to me, invested 20 million euros in two players, like never before [se se confirmar Hjulmand], although he still needs to secure a fullback. What happened last year, with fourth place, was due more to itself, with all due respect to what Sp Braga did. He often shot himself in the foot, especially in the first round,” he said.
The candidacy of Minho’s team does not convince the former trainer of Estoril, Estrela and V. Guimarães, among others. “I think Sp. Braga will be a bit below the big three. This has nothing to do with the quality of the team, but with the pressure to fight for the title, which Benfica and FC Porto in particular are more used to. ” It will be difficult for the greats, especially in home games, but I don’t believe he will maintain the regularity and establish himself as a candidate,” he emphasizes.
four in a row
Anyway, and in a situation that is not very common in Portugal, the four candidates leave with the same coaches and the backbone of the teams that finished last season. Even with the loss of two key players, Gonçalo Ramos (top scorer of the team) and the Spaniard Grimaldo (influencing 14 goals), Benfica managed to compensate these departures, at least in theory, with Arthur Cabral and Jurásek and even added more value to the team, with the arrival of Di María and the Turkish Kökçü, the most expensive acquisition in the club’s history (25 million euros). Sporting also broke its record with Swedish striker Gyökeres (20M), awaiting confirmation, for a very similar fee, of the signing of Danish Hjulmand to the vacant place with the only significant departure, that of Uruguayan Ugarte.
More discreet FC Porto, with the second largest budget, saw Colombian Uribe leave (for the time being) and brought in only two midfielders (Nico González and Alan Varela), in addition to former Gilista Fran Navarro for attack, leaving a possible Taremi exit. “I am happy with the durability of almost the entire squad. This is an added value and also costs money for the club, which has made a lot of effort to keep the key players,” Sérgio Conceição justifies.
Sp Braga saw Iuri Medeiros and Sequeira leave – Uros Racic ended his loan – but guaranteed Bruma’s continuity, signed European champion José Fonte and managed to go to Germany to save midfielder Rodrigo Zalazar from relegated Schalke, in a transfer to value of five million euros. And he still had the financial strength to take Adrián Marín and Vítor Carvalho from Gil Vicente and convince Rony Lopes to risk a return to Portugal.
Championship without islands
In the rest, no big news is expected and most likely to happen the same as last season, with a great balance between the remaining 12 participants, almost all of them with budgets between 4.5 and 10 million euros – the exception is V. Guimarães , with 18, but judging by his fleeting participation in the Conference League, where he fell at the feet of a Slovenian opponent, it seems that the people of Minho are not capable of much more than last year. This is the first season since 1984/85 in which the islands have no representative in the I Liga. The Azores lost Santa Clara and Madeira the historic Marítimo.
“We saw last year that budgets are of little importance. Marítimo had one of the biggest and eventually got relegated. Everything goes together and then there is a team that has two or three reinforcements that come out better than expected and eventually stand out.” , as happened with Arouca. Even Vitoria will be there after the European elimination,” concludes Faquirá.
Lisbon in strength but Braga wins
Another curiosity is the fact that the Associação de Futebol de Lisboa (AFL) again has five teams in the main division, thanks to the emergence of Estrela da Amadora, who joins the two greats, Casa Pia and Estoril. Nothing like this has been seen for 20 seasons: in 2003/04, Belenenses and Alverca joined the amateurs in the I Liga. It was normal for the AFL to have four representatives, with a minimum between 2010 and 2012 (Benfica and Sporting only).
Still, the Lisbon Federation will remain in second place in this particular ranking, as Braga remains at the forefront, with six teams present in the I Liga, thanks to the promotion of Moreirense, who joined Sp. Braga, V Guimarães, Famalicão, Vizela and Gil Vicente, repeating the contingent it already had in 2021/22. Big Minho!
VAR audio is revealed once a month
One of the (semi) novelties of the new season is the fact that some communication between field referees and VAR is now made public. This had already happened in the first season in which the new technology was introduced in the I Liga, but according to the Portuguese Football Federation “the impact of the dissemination of the audio was not the desired one, even contributed to the noise around the tool to increase , with no benefit to the game”.
A few years later, the FPF took up the idea again, after the decision was communicated to the C1 referees in July. The objective of the Board of Arbitration is “pedagogical, in accordance with what it has always considered to be appropriate practice”. The unveiling of the audio of the evaluated bids on the screen next to the lawn will take place once a month. The rules of the game also underwent minor changes. One of the most relevant changes is the charging for lost time celebrating goals as compensation and the fact that the coach will now be penalized if an offense is committed by someone who is on the bench and cannot be identified.
Source: DN
