Benfica 4-5 Barcelona: has there been a more chaotic and rewarding thriller? | Soccer

IT’S ENTERTAINMENT!

Torrent rain. A defensive line tall enough to make even Ange Postecoglou grab his pearls. Nine goals, three of them penalties, one of them turned into his own net by a defender and another a weekly accident. Three goalie roars, two of them committed by a man who retired last August. Some breathtaking saves. A fantastic comeback. An extremely late winner followed by a VAR check that threatened to not only chalk it off but award a penalty at the other end. A very public post-match dressing down, harkening back to the Phil Brown b@nter era and an opportunity to further riff on Manchester United’s woes even though they weren’t playing.

Football Daily has probably witnessed more chaotic and rewarding football matches than the absolute thriller won by Barcelona against Benfica at the Estádio do Sport last night, but in terms of sheer entertainment we struggle to come up with one out of our quick wits really cross multiple fields. Although the conspicuous absence of a brawl and at least one red card mean that Tuesday’s Bigger Cup game in Portugal doesn’t meet all of Football Daily’s criteria for a stone-walled classic, we’re happy to applaud Barcelona goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny’s commendable effort for to ensure we were treated to both. But after reflecting on his rush of blood to the head, we’re prepared to admit that it’s probably even more amusing that the player he violently poleaxed in the build-up to Benfica’s second goal happened to be one of his own teammates.

While the accidental assault on Alejandro Balde by Szczesny, who had hung up his gloves and boots last summer only to perform a u-turn in Barcelona’s hour of need, was almost certainly our favorite moment from last night’s game, it had tough competition. His mistake for the penalty was amusing, albeit not as delightful as the sight of his despondent counterpart Anatoliy Trubin smashing a kick-out into Raphina’s head and seeing the ball ricochet past him into his own net. The fact that TNT’s commentary team happened to be singing the Ukrainian goalkeeper’s praises at the time made the whole incident even more comically absurd. After some late, late controversy, Benfica ran out desperately unlucky losers, only to be very publicly vilified on the pitch by their manager Bruno Lage.

It wasn’t all bad news for the former Wolves boss, who can at least take solace in the fact that in Alvaro Carreras he has a real prospect. The 21-year-old caused Barcelona all sorts of problems and is exactly the kind of left wing-back Manchester United are currently crying out for. Coincidentally, he’s also the exact same left wing-back that the collective geniuses in the Ineos hive mind transferred to the Portuguese outfit for £5m back in August after deeming him surplus to requirements at Old Trafford .

 LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE

Join Barry Glendenning at 20:00 (GMT) for red-hot updates of PSG 3-3 Manchester City in the Bigger Cup, while Simon Burnton will be on call at the same time for the rest of the night’s action.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

If you want, I can be delusional and say different things. I say it like I see it” – Ruben Amorim won’t stop being critical of his Manchester United team, which is good news for tea emails but perhaps not so good news for dressing room TVs.

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Join Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning and the Football Weekly pod team as they look back at an entertaining night of Bigger Cup action.

Big Website’s bookstore has a ton of great new tomes just waiting must be added to your online basket. There is Are you talking football? of Tom Williams and David Squires’ latest brilliant collection of cartoons: Chaos in the box. Get shopping!

It’s easy to mock David Beckham for his celebrity, his desperation for a knighthood and his hagiographic documentary (trying to rewrite history and convince us he was the ‘star’ player in the 1990s Manchester United team, not Eric Cantona at the start, then Roy Keane and David May and that he was the player who drove ‘galactico’ Real Madrid to the league after first being banned from the first team) but if you had told me back in 1996 when he scored to goal against Wimbledon that the squeaky young lad dating a Spice girl would end up speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I wouldn’t have believed you. As LP Hartley said: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’” – Noble Francis.

Are we really that surprised to hear another wine from José (yesterday’s Sour Grapes section – full email edition)?” – Mark McFadden.

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