Benfica may be out of Europe and out of the cups, but 2025/26 may yet prove fruitful for the Eagles who are still alive in the Primeira Liga title race.
A 3-0 win against Vitória this afternoon in Lisbon cut the deficit to leaders Porto to four points, with the Dragons facing a tough assignment in Braga tomorrow. Benfica also leap three points clear of city rivals Sporting, although the Lions have two games in hand.
Vítoria’s surprising decision to sack coach Luís Pinto and replace him with Gil Lameiras has not brought immediate dividends, the Guimarães outfit losing their two games since the switch.
That said, the margin of victory does not tell the story of the match with the visitors competing well for most of the 90 minutes and creating several chances to score.
But defensive mistakes proved costly. Cheap losses of the ball by Samu and Beni Mukendi were taken advantage of by Ricardo Ríos, who provided assists for Gianluca Prestianni and Pavlidis to score.
Beni, who has enjoyed a highly positive season, endured a miserable match from an individual point of view and compounded his earlier error by scoring an own goal to seal Vitória’s fate.
Mourinho and the importance of correctly applying pressure:
“The first two goals resulted from us applying pressure high up the pitch which we organised well and which we had worked on all week. But from the midway point of the first half, Vitória positioned their players intelligently, in a different way, which made things tough for us.
“During half time we showed a good selection of images of the first half, analysed them, and defined the right timing to apply pressure and we got control back. The second goal killed the game.
“In the last part of the match, with our fresh substitutes on, we again applied high pressure, despite being 3-0 up. We could have scored more but that would have been tremendously unjust for Vitória.”
