For whom the bell tolls.

I fear that with that cryptic title, I may scare some of my readers. Well, BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID! Because I am about to speak the truth, nothing wavering, for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea... You see, as a self-titled Benfica fanatic, I have traditionally been willing to put up with almost anything from my team. For example, I suffered through a 10-year trophy-less drought. I just laughed when Benfica fired their coach after they tied Leixões the first game of the season. Now, if you're not familiar with Leixões, you're not alone. There are a lot of people in Portugal who had followed professional soccer for years and never heard of this team until the beginning of this season. Follow along with me for a moment (Brewer fans will be able to relate to this better than most--Reds fans too!):
Game 1: Leixões 1-1 Benfica
Game 2: Benfica 0-0 Guimarães
Game 3: Nacional 0-3 Benfica
Game 4: Benfica 3-0 Naval
Game 5: Braga 0-0 Benfica
Game 6: Benfica 0-0 Sporting
Game 7: Leiria 1-2 Benfica
Game 8: Benfica 2-1 Maritimo

In the Carlsberg Cup:
Game 1: Amadora 5-6 Benfica (win on penalties!)
Game 2: Benfica 1-1 Setubal
Game 3: Setubal 2-1 Benfica: Benfica's eliminated from this tournament.

Champions' League:
Game 1: Milan 2-1 Benfica
Game 2: Benfica 0-1 Shaktior Donetsk
Game 3: Benfica 1-0 Celtic

The mere fact that Benfica made it into the group stages of the Champions League is pretty impressive, if you think about it--they're horrible. But rather than simply accept failure in Europe and maybe try for some domestic success, what have they done? They got eliminated from the League Cup by Setubal. Ok, so maybe Setubal's good this year? Nope. So now we're down to one competition, surely we can compete in the Portuguese League, right? Four ties and four wins net you 16 points out of a possible 24. Porto has 24 points. So it would take 3 losses from Porto, and 3 wins at the same time from Benfica, to put "us" on top. Unlikely. Why is Porto so good? Basically, it's because they believe they can be good, they work hard to be good, and they don't have 14 years of mediocre form to remind them just how bad they can consistently be.

So let's make it official: I will not be cheering for Benfica for a few months. I cannot say how long this will last, but I can say that I won't be cheering for anyone else in the Portuguese league either--unless I start bleeding some other color in the meantime.

There, that is the state-of-the-union. Oh, and fyi, Sporting is even worse this year, so keep your green mouths shut (you know who you are!).