Group D: Benfica AC Milan Celtic Shakhtar Three tough teams to play against, especially Milan being the defending champion and all, but as long as Benfica play well they should be able to advance to the next round of the Champions League.
LOL you are ********ing dumb. yes yes islinho nery castillo srna Lucarelli willian and Jadson, two of brazils top prospects all those players would be starting at benfica no problem.
wha?? its common knowledge the fantastic players they have. its hardly my fault you dont knwo their qualities. ridiculous. come abck when you understand one single thing about soccer.
Dude you know you took that from soccer24-7 I've seen your posts many times they are identical to some of the members on that site I'm also on that site
When I understand something about football? You said Simao was worth 7 millions when he came from Barcelona to Benfica and I don't know lmao
good luck in the group stages. we kicked each others butts last year. it'll be interesting to see who comes out on top this time. this is the fixture list... Milan - Benfica 18/09 Shakhtar - Celtic 18/09 Celtic - Milan 03/10 Benfica - Shakhtar 03/10 Benfica - Celtic 24/10 Milan - Shakhtar 24/10 Celtic - Benfica 06/11 Shakhtar - Milan 06/11 Benfica - Milan 28/11 Celtic - Shakhtar 28/11 Milan - Celtic 04/12 Shakhtar - Benfica 04/12
and you think shakter is a horrible team? even worse! wtf u on about with some other site too? seriously you have some personal problems and i suggest you go get some help. ...and a life instead of attempting to say benfica is the best team in the world and miles better then shakter, and saying i copied someone from his list of players. ridiculous, shakter always have had a good team, and its not my fault ur the one lurking around other forums knowing ******** all about them and i know thier players very well. i guess you didnt know islinho was one of brazils best rightbacks before he went there, or nery castillo one of the best players in copa america.
It's going to be a dogfight for second place. any new players in your team that you got over the summer? I know donati is one.
our central midfield dynamic has changed as we signed scottish international scott brown for £4.5mill and massimo donati for £3mill. these two are now our central midfield pairing but both are box to box midfielders and also brown will interchange with nakamura at times allowing him (naka) to become more involved centrally when he feels the need. rumour also has it that we may be getting eidar gudjohnsen on a season long loan from barca. portsmouth, newcastle, west ham and galatasaray are all after him but interestingly nothing has been finalised yet adding weight to the rumours that eidar was waiting to see if we qualified as he wants to play CL and the other 4 teams cant provide that. australian scott mcdonald has joined and adds pace and guile up front. what shape are you guys in? i see you have leaned towards youth with adu and di maria arriving. will the loss of simao, beto and manu fernandes be adequately covered?
In a word. No. Miccoli Simao and Manuel Fernandes were our three top players. Miccoli will probably be missed the least as we signed Cardozo and Di Maria for the attack..both pretty good...cardozo was leading scorer in Argentinas league for 2 straight seasons and Di Maria is one of Argentinas best prospect. However its the loss of simao in the attacking midfield role that worries me..not to mention manuel fernandes....he was one of the best talents in world football, and we wont replace him easily. Simao added experience and speed in our midfield, and manuel fernandes would have linked defence to attack very well with high quality, but its plainly obvious right now we are greatly missing those two aspects of the game. We need another attacking midfielder/forward like simao was. as for centre midfield, we signed a young Ururugayan international Maxi Pereira who from all accounts is pretty talented..so we shall see. We definatly need quality there. Right now i think we are in big trouble, and celtic can definatly smash us at home like you did last season, and if things dont change probably nick a point of us on the road. Our team is a mess right now with too many losses to key players, and needs a month or so more to settle. good luck!
Someone in the Kopenhagen vs Benfica thread said, "Benfica is history!" Look how that turned out. You have to play the games. The first one is tough for sure. Let's hope that Benfica can come away with a tie. The last three games in group play will be tough for Benfica. They have to go to Scotland, play Milan at home, and then finish off in the cold weather of the Ukraine in December!
Nah, we'll do just fine. And I'm not too worried about Shaktar either, because we generally fare well against Eastern teams. We beat them a year ago in a friendly match and we were playing like crap back them. This is going to be between the Irish and us.
Personally, I think it'll be the Scottish, but who knows. As has been said, the three other teams are very even. I think we are better inidividually than Celtic, however. Shakhtar are pretty stacked...
A tough but fair draw. More deja vu with Celtic (meaning we'll face two of the three teams we faced in last year's UCL after beating FCK). We all know how good Celtic is after playing them last year (even draw), and anyone taking Shakhtar unseriously is a total fool. Milan, well, taking a point off them early would be golden, but I'm skeptical about that happening. My concern is that SLB is just plain playing like crap recently, having lost key players and dealing with a new coach. If they can turn it around, they can be competitive, but they were very fortunate to win at Copenhagen, and we can't ride luck forever. Will be a serious fight for second place.
Well in all honesty and seriousness AC will be in 1st place. Benfica and Celtic will be fighting for 2nd. Our first game will most likely be our toughest of all. But if Benfica can manage a tie against Milan away from home that'll be as good as a won! I think tying both Milan games will be absolutely fantastic. A win would be marvilous but I think thats asking too much against the defending champs. I think both games against Shakhtar should be wins, not easy, but wins nonetheless. Its a coin flip against Celtic because we destroyed them last year but also got destroyed by the same score (3-0). So only time will tell, but with Camacho guiding us and making us play great soccer we should be able to advance. And with Di Maria on the starting line up he will definately do some damage. Im still hopen for a huge signing or at least a decent signing by LFV since he hadnt gone to the Copenhagen-Benfica game yestaday in order to finish up the business with "reforcements". Im praying for a last minute "surprise" tomorow since its the last day of the transfer season. Haha thatd be great but very unlikely. Forca Benfica! Boa sorte!
Remember our home game against Milan is the last of the groups stage so, as Milan's first place should already be secured by then, and since they're such nice guys they could ease things up a bit , at least to give their friend Rui Costa a classy last season.
Should be interesting to see Rui Costa play against AC Milan. I hope he gives it his all and plays a hell of a game. I hope he scores against them too!!! That would be great!
I believe the game is three weeks away. And I really believe that Camacho can have this team in some sort of rhythm where they are playing well and not struggling to find out who they are collectively as a unit. I think they will have to rely on a little luck when they travel to the San Siro. But by the time they face Shontek at home, I think they'll have a team good enough to compete and take a full three points.
Check this out form Shakhtar's web site. It seems that the Ukrainian journalists don't think much of Benfica. They will consider anything less then 2nd place in the group a bad result considering the opposition (Celtic and Benfica). http://shakhtar.com/cgi-bin//fc-sh/allnews.pl?id=5414