Junior Watch

A few observations:

It seems Rui Jorge is doing a great job coaching Belenenses Junior Team.

Estoril and Boavista so far are below expectations compared to last year.

FC Porto seems very strong at this point.

Real Sport Massamá is finally reflecting on the classification table the quality of their cantera.

Benfica and Amadora got a draw against each other and Benfica managed to score twice against a fairly strong team.

It's curious to see Vitória de Guimarães at 5th considering they have a lot of promissing young players coming up at U-16 level, maybe in a couple of years. They are scoring a fair ammount of goals.

We play Vs Real on the 21st of October and Vs Belenenses on December 3rd. Hopefully enough time to get the machine fine tuned but at this point I'm not as confident as last year. We might win the regular season but after that.........

Let's hope André Cacito gains the striker position and that one of the wingers starts scoring at least once every 3 games (Paim does have a goal after 3 rounds) and that João Martins garantees enough "steel" in the Defensive Midfield and perhaps there is a better combination than André Pires and João Gonçalves in midfield.
Possibly sacrificing André Pires for Adrien Silva and might I add that Silva, Martins and Gonçalves would garantee a lot of defensive security to the rest of the team allowing more freedom to Rui Figueiredo and the 3 forwards to attack.

We'll see but so far this team is clearly weaker (and different) than last year's.

I think Fábio Paim and Alison are too similar in technical caracteristics and athleticism and style of play (difference is Paim is slightly faster) and when they switch flanks their markers don't really have something completely different to deal with.
I think we need to "inject" Bruno Matias into the left flank to add some speed and aggressiveness, we need somebody to pressure their full-backs to force opponents to double up on one of the flanks and opening up through the centre for the Forward-Centre to come in unmarked.

Diogo Tavares and David Caiado are sorely missed by this team at this point.



André