After an interruption for Christmas and New Year celebrations, Benfica soccer is back this weekend. Benfica will be playing at Setubal at 19:15 on Saturday. Coming on the heals of a FC Porto loss before the break, this game has added importance. Although Porto still has a significant 7 point lead, it does allow for us Benfica fans to “dream” of still reaching the top spot.

January 1st also marked the beginning of the winter trading season. Camacho has indicated that Benfica has too many players and he would like to see some of them traded, or lent away during the break. Already on their wait out are Bergessio and Andrés Diaz. The first player will be an outright sale of the 50% stake Benfica has in his rights. Diaz on the other hand will be lent to another team for the time being.

Camacho has also indicated that he wants “several” new players, preferably starters.

This is one of the reasons that I am so against Camacho having come to Benfica. In the pre-season Benfica built, and spent, a lot of money on certain players, most of which are not to Camacho´s liking. If Benfica is forced to sell the rights to some of them now it will be most certainly at a financial loss.

The other possibility is that these players stay on the squad, but with Camacho´s new arrivals will be seeing very limited playing time. This is especially the case with Di Maria and Freddy Adu. Both of players cost Benfica a lot of money, are very young, and are potential stars. None of this will happen if Benfica goes out and buys two or three more “stars” that block the progression of these young players.

Since in terms of winning anything this season Benfica is headed for a disaster, lets just hope we don´t end up losing some of these young stars also.