Benfica and Braga meet again in the midweek in league in the Estadio da Luz on Wednesday both teams are to face each other in the semi-final stage of Taca da Liga.
Braga produced a unbelievable result by beating Benfica 2-1 here in the league on saturday and this result will allow the host to shift focus on trying to retain the cup that it won in the last season.
When it is four teams from Portugal’s most influential teams in a semi-final setting, it is truly the real deal and this year is Braga’s title.
Psychologically, the visitors may have the edge, after a 2-1 success at this venue over the weekend, with Benfica, losing after winning all eight of their home league games this season going into the weekend.
Benfica failed to capitalise on the opportunity to level on points with leaders Sporting Lisbon after Bruno Lage’s men conceded two first-half goals, and although Arthur Cabral pulled one back deep into injury time, the Portuguese champions could only manage a 2-1 victory against Boavista.
To cast that result aside, Lage will hope he can take the seven-time winners to another final, and ultimately secure the team’s first victory in this competition for nine years.
This is one competition in which Benfica love to dominate by securing all four editions between 2009 and 2012, as well as three successive ones between the seasons 2014/15 and 2016/17, but they have been restricted to the final place only once since then, suffering defeat to crosstown rivals Sporting in the process.
The Eagles have been knocked out of the group stage three times in that period, but this season has altered the format of the Taca da Liga to an 8-team competition and the Eagles beat Santa Clara in the quarter-finals.
Braga has never won the Portuguese league title, but they have saved all their best performances for the domestic cup tournaments in recent periods.
Last season, however, Benfica lost at this point as Estoril stunned them on penalties. Estoril would later lose to Braga in the final.
Braga has won the Taca da Liga three times since it was first established in 2007, and their victory last year adds to the two they had previously achieved by defeating Porto in 2013 and 2020.
The cup competitions will receive a lot of attention since, even though Braga won here over the weekend, they are currently in fourth place, well behind the top three.
However, Carlos Carvalhal's team is a good traveler and will believe they can pull off another upset after winning six in a row at home.
This is the first of six games in four separate tournaments over the next three weeks in Braga's hectic January, which still includes the possibility of playing in the Europa League and domestic cups.
The only player now out for Benfica is Tiago Gouveia, but Lage is probably going to rotate a bit because they are in the running for the title and have two important Champions League matches coming up soon.
In the last round versus Santa Clara, Lage did field a comparatively strong team; the only regular starters to take a break were Orkun Kokcu, Angel Di Maria, and Vangelis Pavlidis, and even then, they were all substituted.
However, after his goal against Braga over the weekend, which ultimately proved to be in vain, Cabral has asserted his right to start in attack over Pavlidis.
Robson Bambu, who scored his first goal in professional football at the age of 27 in that 2-1 victory over the weekend, might thus have to stand up to the plate once more.
Carvalhal had a little more rotation than Benfica in their quarterfinal, but the visitors could play well here since a title challenge is no longer an option.
