Selections cause razia in FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting. Who suffers the most?

ANDthere is another pause for international commitments, the last of this calendar year of 2026, and, as you would expect, brings with it an authentic razia in the squad of the so-called three 'great' of portuguese football, although there are those who have more reason to worry than others.

Benfica's squad ends up being the most affected, as Marco Silva will lose, no less than 17 players. More specifically, Samuel Soares, Tomás Araújo, João Palhinha (Portugal), Diogo Ferreira, Daniel Banjaqui (sub-21 of Portugal), José Neto, Anísio Cabral (sub-19 of Portugal), Anatoliy Trubin, Georgiy Sudakov (Ukraine), Fredrik Aursnes, Andreas Schjelderup (Norway), Alessandro Circati (Australia), Alexander Bah (Denmark), Souffian El Karouani (Morocco), Dodi Lukebakio (Belgium), Gianluca Prestiani (Argentina) and Vangelis Pavlidis (Greecia).

This means that, over the next two weeks, the Lisbon will have no choice but to resort to the training levels to compose the working group, since you will have at your disposal only Clément Lenglet, Samuel Dahl, Gabriel Indio, Enzo Barrenechea, Manu Silva, Leandro Barreiro, Claudio Echeverri, Jakub Kaminski, Rafa Silva and John Durán.

In Sporting, the scenario is not much better, since the selections took Rui Silva (Portugal), Eduardo Felicíssimo, João Simões, Rafael Nel (sub-21 of Portugal), Salvador Blopa, Flávio Gonçalves (sub-20 of Portugal), Georgios Vagiandis, Fotis Ioannidis (Greece), Maxi Araújo, Rodrigo Zalazar (Uruguay), Ivan Fresneda (sub-21 of Spain), Silas Andersen (sub-21 of Denmark), Issa Doumbia (Italy), Geny Catamo (Mozambique), Nestory Irankunda (Australia), Jesse Derry (sub-20 of England) and Luis Suárez (Colombia).

At a time when he tries to impose his ideas, after being hired to succeed Rui Borges, Paulo Fonseca will only have Kaique Pereira, Diego Callai, Zeno Debast, Gonçalo Inacio, Ibrahima Ba, Eduardo Lent, Nuno Santos, Moncef Zekri, Sergi Altimira, Pedro Lima and Luís Guilherme at his disposal, so he will also have to call the ‘kids’ together with the ‘graudes’.

FC Porto ends up being the club less affected by this phenomenon, since the only players who saw ‘fly’ were Diogo Costa, Alberto Costa (Portugal), João Afonso, Martim Fernandes (sub-21 Portugal), Jakub Kiwior, Jan Bednarek (Poland), Victor Froholdt (Denmark), Pablo Rosario (Dominican Republic), Inbeom Hwang (South Korea) and Santiago Giménez (Mexico).

Francesco Farioli will thus have a greater margin to ‘fine the machine’ of the national champions in title, since he will still be able to count on Cláudio Ramos, João Costa, Chris Smalling, Zaidu Sanusi, Nehuén Pérez, Dominik Prpic, João Souza, Francisco Moura, Gabri Veiga, Vasco Sousa, Alan Varela, Seko Fofana, William Gomes, Samu Aghehowa, Pepê, Borja Sainz, André Silva, Gabriel Mec and Oskar Pietuszewski.

Time to recover injured

The pause for international commitments arises, moreover, at a time when Francesco Farioli, Marco Silva and Paulo Fonseca want it to be useful to speed up the recovery of players whose names continue to appear in the clinical reports of FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting, with a view to the authentic ‘crazyness’ that the competitive calendar will put you ahead.

This applies, in dragons, to Chris Smalling, Vasco Sousa, Gabriel Mec and William Gomes. In eagles, it is the case of Clément Lenglet and Leandro Barreiro. And finally, in the lions, will have as protagonists the most delicate dossiers of Zeno Debast and Nuno Santos.