Tri-Champs and a Cup

And for the first time in my lifetime, so far, I see my team for the first time get a tri-champs title!

SL Benfica has won again and now makes it 3 seasons in a row winning the First League.

And to end the season we also won our 7th League Cup title too!

This is kinda beautiful...

BI-CAMPEÕES!

Look who's back!

For the first time in my life I see my Benfica win back-to-back championships!

We are now proudly the 2014/2015 Portuguese Champs! (still with one game to go to the end of the championship)

It's our 34th champ title!

Lets party!

Old Benfica players

They are not quite old. But they no longer play for Benfica for a good couple of years or more.

But they did pretty well.

The top on the post is Javi Garcia. Was a terrific defense middlefielder. Just after two years and a Championship win he went off to Man City and is now playing for Russian Zenit (don't know what they see in that championship besides the money they make...)

He was my favourite player at the time...and he would make it with high marks to my Woman Perspective collection!

'Pabito' Aimar was like a Mage as a playmaker.

When he came to Benfica he was not that young but even so he played with us after he's 30s. And always made a difference. Of course that comparing with Rui Costa I prefer Rui Costa ;)

Saviola, also known as, 'El conejo'!

He was a smart striker appearing in the right place at the right time making many important goals! It seems he's stil playing for Verona.


All these cards I got in some Benfica promotional products, alongside scarfs and posters and other stuff.

I don't know if there are more cards and if I can get them on the store. But I do have other more old collectables like postcards with other players. I'll check for them to post here.

We won it (almost) all!

This last weekend we won the last trophy to win for the last season 2013/2014.

The Super Cup is played between the Championship winner and the Portuguese Cup winner. Since we won both of them the losing team from the Portuguese Cup plays the Super Cup.

This is the first trophy played in right at the beginning of the new season but it's about the last season so...we can say we won all national trophies to win from last season!

We are the first team to achieve that since adding the new trophy the Leagues Cups.

We just missed out the UEFA Euro League Cup.

Hope this season we can get the championship at least. We lost almost every player from last year team. This is going to be difficult.

Enough said

Benfica Campeão Nacional 2013-2014

This past week was a week to remember.

My beloved Benfica, on last Wednesday,  won the semi-final against FC Porto and won the pass to the Portuguese Cup final (second most  important competition after the Championship).

We played almost all game with 10 against 11 but in the end we won with a rage goal!

But if it was not enough to our hearts on Sunday we played for the Championship, and with two more games to go, we won and could already celebrate the new title of Champions!

We had a rough end of season  last year, because we could win 3 or 4 competitions but in the end...we ended up with no title.

But this year we are back to being able to win 4 competitions but we have one already! And I don't care what others may say but winning the Championship and wearing the 'quinas' in the shirt as the regnant champ is the best!

They say we, Benfica fans are around 6 millions and by the photos and videos from Portugal and around the globe we could see we are even more than that!

As usual, the fans went to Marques de Pombal square to party all night long.

The team took almost 4 hours to make a few kilometers from the Stadium to the square.

Here they talked about 100 thousands in the streets but then I saw ESPN reporting around 500 thousands!

Sure we are a lot of happy fans.

We are now the team with most National Championships victories (more than Real Madrid, for example).

O Campeão Voltou! (The Champion is back)

Eusébio

And the great Eusébio has died today.

He was the greatest Portuguese football player ever.

He was the Benfica symbol...

...and will always be.

Rest in Peace 'Pantera Negra'.

This is football

Well...we played well.

But it wasn't enough.

We lost the game in the last minute of added time.

Is the second game in 5 days we lose that way.

We lost the national championship title, probably, last Saturday, and yesterday we lost the final of the second most important European competition for clubs.

This is no good.

But this is football.

Panini 2013 Mega Craques - Liga Portuguêsa

I knew Panini tried to commercialize football trading cards a few years ago. But I thought they left it aside since the sticker are the thing around here.

My mistake.

It seems they keep trying and edit trading cards for the national football first league and there are people that buy it.

Cool.

So I bought 15 packs (5 one time, 10 the next time) of Mega Craques 2013 - Liga Portuguêsa.

Nice looking pack.

Even better because there are two players from my team.

On the back it states that every pack brings 6 cards. Being the entire collection 180 cards.

I checked the Panini Portugal site looking for a checklist but forget it.

We still live so far away from the Panini America standards.

But at least I found out there are a kind-of-base-set plus two kind-of-insert-sets.

From the 180 cards 27 cards are what they call it “Made in Portugal” player cards and 9 cards out of the 180 cards are “Muito Obrigado” (b.n.: "Thank you") players cards.

So lets see what did I get.

I know probably the majority of foreign people that read this blog will not recognize the majority of the players nor the teams.

Exception made for the most well known Portuguese players or some worldwide well known football teams.

But bare with me.

There are colourful cards in here!

Not bad for a first pack.

If there is at least one Benfica's player in the pack it is a good pack.

See!? One thing you must learn is that S.L.Benfica is the best Portuguese football team.

Here is Salvio to highlight. He played for SLB a couple of years ago by loan. After that played for Atlético de Madrid. This season we bought him from them.

As you can see the card front has a nice design. What I like the most from the sticker to the trading cards is that in the stickers you can only see the players face.

Usually you don't see a full body player photo on a sticker. And I like to see the teams uniforms.

Here is one of the variations. Being the first uniform the red t-shirt and white shorts.

The card back states the player full name and some vital info.

Nice touch with the last three seasons info. For field players that is ok. But for Goalkeepers having on column for goals (column with 'G.') is useless.

Again nice touch for the trivia. Shame is that Panini simply does not care about Portugal and keep writing in some 'Portunhol' or 'Espanholês'.

Some words are wrongly spelled, and some are simply written in Spanish.

That is *no* cool!

In the end they add a gaming touch. Really, I'd pass that in change for more seasons stats or the trivia well written.

No Benfica player? Don't care.

To make up for the last two packs without any Benfica player this have two players!

Matic is replacing Javi Garcia as Defense Midfielder.

André Almeida is a rookie having the first season at the main team.

Ohhhhhhh!

Ahhhhhhh!

Benfica's logo!

Look! Isn't it beautiful?

And yes.

In all home games we have an eagle flying from the stadium roof top, descending to the field to land on top of the logo.

Try to do that with other animals!?

The back of the card is a team photo. Nice!

Shame this photo was taken from a game without one of our best strikers: Cardozo.

I highlight Fábio Coentrão too not because he is playing for Real Madrid.

I don't like Madrid.

I like Barcelona.

But the thing is that Fábio were one of the best left defenders that played for Benfica in the last years.

And the card back shows that he played for us.

This is also one of those 'Made In Portugal' cards.

It's a shame that most national players play in foreign championships.

Since Coentrão went to Madrid he did not play like he did here SLB. That is a curse!

Next pack I get Luisinho who is exactly one of the two new left defenders we got for this season.

Yep. That is Cristiano Ronaldo.

Too much of a Prima Donna. If he stayed with the head in the shoulders he would be probably even better.

But there is only one Messi in every generation.

Remember Jeffren from Barcelona?

He actually played for the main team but never had a chance. A bit like Borjan. He moved to Sporting but was tormented by injuries and Sporting is undergoing some turbulent times.

Garay is the best central defender we have in a couple of years. I know Luisão is like a 'boss' in the defense, but Garay is an Ace.

Maxi Pereira is our right defender and is best known as 'Super Maxi' - pun from an ice cream name.

Nani is probably the second best known Portuguese player. Nowadays. Or I had to mention Eusébio and Figo.

Hugo Almeida is a striker that sometimes seems more like a lamppost someone left in the middle of the area.

But his card is quite cool because we get a photo of him celebrating a goal.

David Simão is a Benfica player on loan to Marítimo. I'd like to have him back to see what he can do with the 'Eagles' uniform.

What I was truly hoping for was the goalies having flying photos. But got no lucky.

The rest is ok. No spectacular photos but they are in action at least.

The most important teams (4 out of 16) have more cards than the middle and bottom of the table teams. I can accept that. But perhaps because my team is one of the main 4.

Will se if I invest and try to get all the 180 cards.

Miklós Fehér - Extra Inning

This is not an happy post.

Is a never-forget post.

To honor one player from my club who died age 24 during a game back in 2004.

Miklos Fehér died January 25th 9 years ago.

It was live on TV.

He just collapsed on the field with a heart failure.

He died with a last smile.

Until today he is remember in every game and every year in his death day.

S.L.Benfica retired his number #29.

It was a first. We don't have the costume to retire numbers so this was the first time for my club and for any other club in Portugal.

To the Eternal #29 who will always be remember.

Panini 2012/2013 Liga Portuguêsa

I was a bit curious why Panini hadn't yet started selling the new stickers and album for the 2012/2013 season for Portuguese football league.

I was wishing it was because they were really improving the collection for this year.

I said 'wishing'.

But they really don't care about my wishes and so they have done the same all over again.

I like the cover main colour. It's my team's colour so I like it.

And if we count that Rúben Amorim is on loan from SLBenfica on Braga so we may say that we have two SLBenfica players on the cover! Even if I don't understand that away Braga uniform being green.

Love to see Salvio wearing the SLBenfica uniform again. Great player.

The stickers cases follow the colour.

And we have those packs with 10 stickers cases again.

From those 4 stickers examples I could see that there is no chrome sticker for the teams logo. I only see those chrome stickers on the UEFA Champions sticker collection. At least SLBenfica is there.

Then the players photo look always the same. And there is no states on the sticker it self. Only players' vital info.

Here is one page from my team. And even if the album and stickers were edited a bit later than usual they didn't updated the last transfers made on the deadline. That's why we still have Javi Garcia wearing the most beautiful uniform ever.

The only one thing that made me take a second look was the insert sticker of 'Top Stars'. I think I can call it that. It only appeared a couple of years ago in Panini football stickers.

This is how I wished all the album stickers were! I'm tired of all the ID photo kind. I want to see the players in action. Would love to see a flying goalkeeper sticker. Lovely.


So...Panini...I'm not making this year album again. And won't make UEFA Champions League too. From now on will only make FIFA World Cup albums. And that's only because we get stickers for the majority of countries around the globe.