The next step in our Champions League campaign is Sport Lisboa e Benfica, or as they are better known, simply Benfica.
While Newcastle United and Benfica clashed in the Eusebio Cup in the summer of 2022, it was a pre-season friendly.
The only competitive match between the two clubs was the Europa League quarter-final in 2013.
After the 3-1 defeat in Lisbon, Newcastle led 1-0 until the last scraps thanks to a Pappis Cisse strike in the return leg at St James Park, before Eduardo Salvio’s 90th-minute equalizer sealed Benfica’s progress to the semi-finals, where they defeated Turkish side Fenerbahce before ultimately succumbing to Rafa Benitez’s Chelsea in the final.
Founded on 28 February 1904 as Sport Lisboa, Benfica is the most decorated club in Portugal, having won a record 38 Primeira Liga titles and a record 34 Portuguese National Cups, of which 26 are equivalent to the FA Cup and 8 are the equivalent of the League Cup.
Since the 2008/2009 season, the club’s famous red shirt has featured three stars above the crest, with each star representing ten league titles won by the club, the most recent of which was won in 2023.
European family tree
Although their last European trophy was in 1962 when they retained the European Cup, they were the first Portuguese team to lift Europe’s most prestigious trophy last year, in 1961. Since then, Benfica have visited a further five European Cup finals, one UEFA Cup final and two Europa League finals, and although they have lost all eight, reaching those ten European finals is a feat that no other Portuguese side has been able to match.
Since 1954, Benfica has played its home games at the Esatdio da Luz, a ground that in the mid-1980s had the largest capacity in Europe and the third largest in the world, an incredible 120,000. That stadium was demolished between 2002 and 2003 and construction of the new Estádio da Luz (Stadium of Light) was completed in 2003, a few years after an English football club shamefully appropriated the name of this famous stadium. The anglicized name has never evoked the same romance as its namesake in the Portuguese capital…
Over the years, Benfica has had a series of high-profile managers, such as former English and Italian managers Sven-Goran Eriksson and Giovanni Trappatoni. Benfica has also had two English managers, John Mortimore and Jimmy Hagan, both of whom presided over the club’s domestic success. Hagan won three league titles and the Portuguese Cup during his three-year tenure starting in 1970, a period in which Benfica won. 29 consecutive league matches, another Portuguese record.
If you’re looking for connections to Newcastle United, former manager Graeme Souness also managed Benfica before his time at St James Park, between 1997 and 1999, during an incredibly barren period for the Lisbon side, with no trophies to be seen at the Estadio da Luz between the year of Souness’s arrival and 2004.
Jose Mourinho
Last month, Jose Mourinho signed a two-year contract as Head Coach of the Eagles. He returned to the club after 25 years, having taken up his first managerial position at the Estadio da Luz in September 2000 when he replaced Jupp Heynckes.
It was reported at the time that Sir Bobby Robson offered him the role of assistant manager at St James’ Park and with the wily Portuguese routinely plundering trophies across the continent, who knows what would have been if that had happened?
Despite his managerial success matching some exceptionally lean times for Newcastle United, Mourinho has had limited success at St. James Park while in the dug-out squad. He has won just three times in 12 visits, the most recent of which was behind closed doors when he was manager of Spurs during the Covid pandemic in the summer of 2020.
Whether Mourinho’s relatively poor record at St. James’ Park next Tuesday will be relevant or not, it is true that while Benfica have started the season unbeaten in the Portuguese league, they currently sit fourth at the bottom of the Champions League, having lost two games to Azerbaijani side Qarabag FK and Mourinho’s former club at Stamford Bridge.
My guess is that Benfica will be there for the taking and under the spotlight with a raucous crowd, Newcastle United will prove too strong for the Portuguese.
#guess #Benfica