Santa Clara-Benfica: Old pupil wants to stop the eagle's flight on the islands

O Benfica will face one of his former players in the Azores archipelago this Monday, at the São Miguel Municipal Stadium, with Petit to be the helmsman of the amazing Santa Clara for the match regarding the closing of the ninth day of the I League.

The insular team has been one of the surprises of the national championship, with a fourth place that comes to fight for the podium of the classification table, although it has not faced any of the so-called ‘three great’, this being the first test of fire of the Azorean class, which comes soon after the surprising elimination in the Cup of Portugal, before the Mafra, of Liga 3.

Benfica is in a series of good results and already takes three consecutive wins after the Classic at the Dragon Stadium, against FC Porto, having won the last two games by 4-1 in the Europa League.

As for the history of confrontations between these two teams, the truth is that Benfica only lost with Santa Clara on one occasion, in 2019/20, in the Stadium of Light, for 3-4, the last time he lost points on island ground before the set of São Miguel in 2021, with a tie to a ball.

To reinforce that Santa Clara has something that Benfica no longer owns in the national championship, since it is one of the three teams, alongside Sporting and FC Porto, which has not yet tasted the defeat this season.

The referee Cláudio Pereira, from AF Aveiro, will whistle the Santa Clara-Benfica, with assistants Tiago Costa and Jorge Fernandes, with the fourth referee Sérgio Guelho, with the VAR Rui Soares and with the AVAR Márcio Azevedo.

The match between Santa Clara and Benfica is scheduled for 6:45 p.m. on Monday and you will be able to follow, live, the essential of the match in the Sports to Minute.

Coaches in direct speech

Petit

Elimination of the Portuguese Cup: “ We had our first loss in a different competition. We learned the lesson, we analyzed it, we corrected it, but we have to react. In the championship we are at a good time, knowing that we will face a candidate for the title and that is also going through a good time. So we expect a difficult game, but we also hope to have a good reaction, playing in our home, with our fans”

Best attack on best defense: “ We have maintained a defensive cohesion, together with FC Porto we have the best defense, but also in the attack we are the fifth team with more goal occasions, in the championship. It will be a good game to see and we hope to give a good answer tomorrow, and we will continue with the good performance we have done throughout the season.”.

Strategy: “ We'll have moments where we have to push high, other times Benfica will push us back, that's part of it. Over 90 minutes you cannot have the offensive flow rate or be installed in the opponent’s midfield, this does not happen in any game”.

Marco Silva 

Short error margin in the I League: “It is not pleasant to look at the classification. But we have to look at ourselves and win our games week after week. From the moment we prepared the season, we knew we'd play after our opponents because of the Europa League. We know that's how it works. If our opponents have good results, it will always happen. There is no use spending energy on this”.

Benfica better than FC Porto and Sporting: “There are several ways to win. Sometimes we want to play like that and we can't. We have to win games and every technical team opts for their way of playing. I don't have to make that comparison. We have our way and we want to follow it. We do not want to be the most beautiful of the party, we want to progress as a team and win titles”.

Good time from Santa Clara: “ Looking at the quality of Santa Clara – organization and quality – will create difficulties for us. The lawn is also not very easy, even due to weather conditions. It is a lawn that sometimes creates difficulties. We expect a good game and we have to be prepared for the game to dictate. We must be able to solve it.”.

Latest Games

Santa ClaraD-V-E-V-V

Benfica: V-V-V-D-V

Last elevens

Santa Clara: Neneca, Lucas Soares, Emanuel Moreira, Pedro Pacheco, Guilherme Romão, Pedro Ferreira, João Vasconcelos, Djé Tavares, Vinícius Lopes, Fernando, Brenner Lucas.

Benfica: Anatoliy Trubin, Alexander Bah, Alessandro Circati, Tomás Araújo, Souffian El Karouani, Manu Silva, Fredrik Aursnes, Rafa Silva, Claudio Echeverri, Andreas Schjelderup, Vangelis Pavlidis.

Absence

Santa Clara: Djé Tavares (suspended).

Benfica: Leandro Barreiro, Daniel Banjaqui, Enzo Barrenechea, Jaden Umeh, Jakub Kaminski and Jhon Durán (injured).