Portuguese Football in English
Gonçalo Guedes says Valencia were deserving of their victory over Real Madrid on Wednesday evening, after the Portuguese netted the opening goal in Los Ches’ 2-1 win over the reigning European Champions.
Former Benfica man Guedes put Valencia in front on 35 minutes with a beautifully placed right-foot shot into the bottom corner, with fellow ex Eagles star Ezequiel Garay adding a second late on ahead of Karim Benzema’s consolation.
Diogo Jota followed up his recent first call to the Portuguese national side by helping Wolverhampton Wanderers to beat Manchester United for the second time in less than three weeks.
Just as when the sides met in the FA Cup last month, the game ended 2-1 to the hosts and once again Jota found the net for Nuno Espírito Santo’s side, this time in the Premier League. The former Porto man finished well from inside the box on 25 minutes to cancel out Scott McTominay’s opener for United, and an own goal from Chris Smalling gave Wolves the points late on.
Polish champions Legia Warsaw have confirmed that Portuguese coach Ricardo Sá Pinto has been fired following their 4-0 defeat to Wisla Krakow at the weekend.
The former Sporting boss was hired last summer on a three-year contract, after the club had won the league and cup double in 2017-18, and was expected to continue a dominance over Polish football which has seen Legia win five of the last six Ekstraklasa titles.
“Milan can say what they want, but no-one can do anything. We have this option to buy and at the end of the season, or even before, we’ll exercise it.” The certainty with which Sevilla Sporting Director Joaquín Caparrós spoke about André Silva in November reflected the Portugal striker’s early impact on Spanish football.
At that point, Silva had scored seven goals in his first 11 games in La Liga, leading Caparros to assert that “fans can rest assured, the player will be with us for many years”. Much has changed since then: Caparros is now first-team coach, with renowned director Monchi returning to the club to oversee operations, and Silva’s stock has fallen dramatically as the goals have dried up.
Cristiano Ronaldo may have been laid low through injury for a couple of weeks, but Portugal’s younger generation of strikers continue to score vital goals for their clubs on the continent. This weekend Rafael Leão and Sérgio Oliveira were on-hand to find the net at crucial moments in France and Greece respectively.
Elsewhere, Bernardo Silva continued his goal trail in England with Manchester City, while there were also Portuguese goals in Hungary, Romania and MLS in the United States. On the managerial front, Marco Silva, José Gomes and Pedro Caixinha lead the positive stories, but there was less good news for Leonardo Jardim, Ricardo Sá Pinto and Nuno Espírito Santo.
