Benfica is out of the Carlsberg Cup.

After a 1 – 1 tie at home, Benfica went to Setubal and lost by 2 – 1.  Honestly, Setubal was the better team.   Benfica did not take this game, or the whole Carlsberg Cup thing,  very seriously and the results are in.  For this game Camacho used 2.5 “regular” players, and in this case, you really couldn´t expect more.  The “0.5″ player was Edcarlos, that is a defender and played at midfield.

The whole concept of rotating players, and giving others a chance  is really nice and all, but you can not put in a whole new team and then expect them to perform.  If a coach wants to give different players some time he should do it by changing only one or two players per game and not the entire team.

It was also obvious from this game that there are players on this team that do not deserve to wear the Benfica jersey.  It is obvious that Camacho is trying to show management that he needs better players, but I want to remind some of you that only a few months ago Luis Filipe Viera was telling Fernando Santos he had a “luxury” squad.

Benfica started the game by going up 1 to 0 on a Freddy Adu  penalty kick goal.  It was Adu´s fourth goal since coming to Benfica.  In the second half Setubal came at Benfica hard and ended up turning the game around.  The first Setubal goal was a childish offering from Benfica defense (Zoro), and the second goal came on a good play from Setubal.  Benfica would still have a couple of chances to tie the game (and regain the lead in the series) but the ball ended up not going in the goal.

After climbing to the second place of the Portuguese League, it seemed Benfica was gaining some momentum, but this loss sort of sets thing back again.  Granted Benfica wasn´t taking this competition very seriously, we should have still won the game!