Chapter 258: Consequences of Loss

Chapter 258: Consequences of Loss

Chapter 258: Consequences of LossNnêw n0vel chapters are published at novelhall.comally, the Benfica fans had nothing to fear from the Porto team, but the truth of the matter remained that they had lost the title of champions of the Liga NOS to the Porto team the previous season, and even worse, they had been unable to defeat them in any of the three times that they had met in the previous season both in the season campaign matches and during a domestic cup campaign.

Yet even with that, the Benfica fans were a fiery bunch who didn’t think they would keep losing to the Porto team just because that was the current sequence, but optimism and realism were two different things.

The Benfica fans had optimism that their team could turn the tides in the coming season, and when they heard about the Porto team losing quite a few of their important first-team players, their optimism slowly started turning to confidence, but reality had thrown a harsh slap in their face.

The Porto team that had lost their important players was currently decimating another team with less than their full power on display.

Moreso since this was their first pre-season game of the season which meant that the players who had just come back from their holidays were performing at this level.

With the knowledge that the Porto team had yet to return to full fitness, were using a much weaker line-up due to fitness and injury concerns, and yet were still smashing through their opponents, the Benfica fans’ confidence wavered and their optimism cooled off.

This was exactly what Sergio Conceicao had hoped for when he had continuously given attacking-based instructions to his players and wanted them to utterly decimate their opponents.

He wanted a situation reminiscent of what was going on between Manchester United and Manchester City to repeat itself.

In the last few years, Manchester City had established itself as the top team in the English football world, a position that once belonged to the Manchester United team... or the noisy neighbors as some would call them.

Some Manchester United fans, as well as a few others still tried to believe that according to their past glory, Manchester United could somehow stand up to the Manchester City team.

With which funds?

Players as good as Alex Telles would probably command a transfer fee of at least 60 million Euros depending on their age and there was no way the Porto executive board would cough up that much money for a singular player, especially with the current financial situation.

Thus he was stuck patching all sorts of holes in all of his previous tactics due to the loss of many pivotal players.

Telles’s playmaking skill was gone from his game plan options, Tiquinho Soares’s ball-holding and evading skills up front were gone, Vincent Aboubakar’s crazy physicality was gone, Ze Luis’s clutch moments were gone and now he had to adjust his tactics accordingly.

The problem he had wasn’t changing the tactics, the problem was how long it would take his players to adjust to such changes.

The changes he would be making to the tactics would need an adjustment period from the players and during the adjustment period, the team could end up losing important games that could make or break their season campaign.

It would be even worse if such a thing happened on the continental stage.

He was already doing all he could to make the necessary adjustments during the pre-season period so that the players could adjust in time for the beginning of the season, but even now, the team was incomplete.

He hadn’t finished player negotiations and some players were still going to join the team after pre-season was over.

There were also injured players like Jesus Corona, Shoya Nakajima, and Jason, who would be joining the team much later due to their injuries.

All these factors aside, Sergio Conceicao could only hope that things worked out for the team in the end otherwise the upcoming season may end up spiraling out of their control.