The European/World Football Thread III

So... Baaaaad weekend for Porto. Can't quite believe that the 5 point lead is already down to just 1. Almost a perfect weekend for Benfica if Sporting had draw as well.

We were quite lucky to win against Braga. They hit the post twice and we didn't do much to trouble Eduardo. Very lucky that Matic got the ball and managed to score the goal.

Porto could have lost the match if Nacional had taken that chance near the end, but then they could have easily won it if Jackson had scored at the last minute. I still don't get how Herrera keeps playing ahead of someone like Defour.

CL now. Porto and Benfica need to win and hope psg/atletico do us a favour (although we actually need more than that to go through now :/)


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An Ajax fan died celebrating their second goal against Barcelona. Fell 10M from the stands. Just seen the pictures, terrible :/

Sporting just about got away with not dropping some points. I felt quite sorry for Guimarães to lose it so late but I had a stupid feeling Sporting would grab a late winner.

Braga are on an absolutely stinking run at the moment, played 5 lost 5, but I felt they were also unlucky to lose that game.

I can't believe we've let a 5 point gap slip. I know it's still early days in the league but it was nice having a 5 point gap at this stage. Although our performances haven't been consistent I can't single out one player who isn't deserving of being in the squad. We're trying and having so much possession in games but we're just not taking our chances at all and sloppy defending is costing us. Hopefully it's a blip we'll soon overcome.

I'm also sick of that 1-1 scoreline too. Our last five games...

1-1 vs Belenenses
1-1 vs Zenit
2-0 vs Guimarães
1 - 1 vs Nacional
1 - 1 tonight

Anyway, looks like we're joining you in the Europa League... unless you pull off an absolute miracle.

An Ajax fan died celebrating their second goal against Barcelona. Fell 10M from the stands. Just seen the pictures, terrible :/

Once again a 1-1! I think this is the worst run of form for Porto I've seen in a long time, 4 draws in the last 5.

And again, another mistake by the defence led to the goal, and this time it was Helton's poor kick. I thought Porto would go on and win it after getting the equaliser early in the second half, but they didn't create enough chances despite all the possession and the goalkeeper managed to pull off some good saves for the chances they did manage.

It looks tough for Porto now, the only good thing was that Zenit also drew, so it's all the same and Porto still have a little bit of hope, even though I can't see anything but a Zenit win against Vienna.

As for Benfica. Lucky win. Again. We let in two easy goals and once again stopped playing after we took the lead. Good thing was Anderlecht were so intent on getting the winner they forgot to keep anyone behind and a fresh Rodrigo managed to run in to score.

Lima was poor. And I hope Rodrigo's goal gives him some confidence again.

Qualification is still not gonna be easy. Olympiakos lost so now we're even on points, but behind due to having lost to them (all those Roberto saves, ughhh). And similarly, I can't see Olympiakos not winning at home vs Anderlecht :/

Thankfully Europa is at least guaranteed because it looked at risk a few time last night when we were losing..

Oh man Porto in danger of not qualifying

Cracking support and even better for them that they watched their side win and progress into the draw for the last 32.

Whilst you're on about German football supporters, I feel I should say that St.Pauli vs FC Köln is live on BT Sports at 5:30pm tomorrow. I'm with you on all this BVB stuff, okayish fans but stick them next to these lot and it's all a bit meh. Two crazy sets of fans.

I love the variety of games that are shown on BT Sports. Dodgy commentators / pundits aside, BT Sports is every football fans dream, if you're into your European Leagues like myself. Occasionally they throw the odd Brazilian match in too - but I can't quite adjust to that as I rather it with Portuguese commentary.

x

We're a joke!

We completely deserved to lose that game. We are completely lacking up front. As for Danilo's penalty, that summed up our performance, terrible! It was a very soft penalty so it was deserved that we didn't score it. Académica deserved all three points though. Solid defending in the second half.

So, just the 1 win in 6. Very rare you see that next to Porto's name. I've just gone back through Porto's results and you have to go as far back as 2005 to see a worse 6 games than what we're currently going through. In 2005 we played 6, won 1, drew 2 and lost 3. Paulo Fonseca is under pressure, he looked absolutely drained in that interview at the end of the game too. Top spot is up for grabs for either yourselves or Sporting.

In 2011 the Champions League Group H was {Porto, Shakhtar, Zenit, APOEL}. Who were the favourites to progress and who actually did progress?

It was Group G. In pot one and two was Porto and Shakhtar respectively, so, arguably making them the favourites. However it was Zenit and APOEL who qualified.

Wooooooooooooow. Yeh, this is easily, eeeeeeeeeeeeeasily the worst run of form for Porto I can remember (as you say you'd need to go back to 2005, and I barely used to follow the league this closely back then).

Completely agree with everything. I watched the match from the start and Porto were non-existant. Very surprised to see such a poor performance from Porto. I kept expecting a reaction from Porto, but there was nothing. Justice was done when the penalty wasn't scored, but Porto did hit the post a few times and Varela, or Mangala, should have scored that one chance Porto had in the second half.

Academica, on the other hand, were very bright and attacked at every opportunity, even forced a couple of great stops from Helton as the defenders did their best to screw up again (Maicon for example).

Deserved win for Academica in the end. And its now 7 points dropped by Porto out of the last 9 available. I really hope we can capitalise on this tomorrow. And Sporting have the same points as us, so they can also overtake Porto.

I wonder how long PdC will let Paulo Fonseca run the show at Porto... results need to improve asap.


RE: The BenficaTV thing.

To be honest, I haven't really read into it too much. But I think the main point was to be able to earn more money than what we get from Olivedesportos (i.e. the company that owns SportTV).

Before, no-one could say no to a TV Rights offer from Olivedesportos, they had SportTV and everyone subscribed to it in order to watch football, that meant they had money. There wasn't much room for negotiation because if you rejected their offer, you'd be left with no TV money, which is pretty much essential all Portuguese teams.

Now. Benfica got their own channel, and decided that, considering our huge fan base, we could probably make more money just charging 10 euro's per month for the channel to each customer.

Add in the fact that we also have exclusive Premier League rights, that means even neutrals can be interested in the channel (I mean, sure maybe Porto or Sporting fans will be reluctant to pay Benfica, but some of them won't mind if they get to watch English football as well as any matches where Porto/Sporting play at the Luz).

I don't know if this method has brought in clear profits yet, but apparently we had around 190,000 subscribers in September. So even if you give a cut of the 10 euros to the cable TV providers, that's still a substancial amount of money coming in just from subscriptions. There's also other things to consider, like advertising and international interest in the channel (e.g. BenficaTV also shows Brasileirao matches).

The last offer Olivedesportos made us was 111m euros for 5 years worth of TV rights, which is just over 22m per season. If you go by the numbers above, we are most likely already quite close to making that sort of money, so I'd expect us to be in a much better position a few years from now.

However, I do agree that we have probably lost a good chunk of our audience who can't afford both SportTV and BenficaTV. On the other hand, there will also be people who will choose to drop SportTV and pick up just BenficaTV because they have no interest in Spanish/German/other Portuguese matches. The only big trump card SportTV have at the moment is Champions League and Europa League.

Anyway. Its probably best to do some research on this if you're really interested because I haven't done much myself and I'm just going by some of the discussions I've had with family/friends. I'm sure the actual business model is much more complex than any of what I've described and you could probably find beter information just searching around the net.

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