Can Bruno Lage Tactics Turn Around Benfica? – Scouting Report

Benfica are one of the biggest clubs in Portugal, and there is absolutely no doubt about that, but when the club was looking for a coach in the summer of 2022, the team was going through a rough patch, losing out to FC Porto and rival Sporting for multiple years in a row.

Roger Schmidt took over Benfica at the beginning of the 2022/23 season as the new head coach, replacing Nelson Verissimo after a disappointing season finishing third in the league with a gap of 17 points from top.

While it didn’t look like a match made in heaven to most experts, Roger Schmidt and his team made the most out of their first season, being one of the best teams in Europe, becoming league champion for the first time in four years, winning the first championship since Bruno Lage left and reaching the quarter-final of the UEFA Champions League, a great feat for the Portuguese club.

Only losing five out of 55 games during the 2022/23 season, Benfica were set for greatness in the upcoming years.

The 2023/24 season proved to be a bit more problematic, however.

While Roger Schmidt and his men played a decent season again, arch-rival Sporting finished top of the league with 10 points more than Benfica had.

In the Champions League, Benfica did not manage to get past the group stages and dropped down to the Europa League consequently, but even there, they disappointed and got eliminated by a struggling Olympique Marseille side.

Roger Schmidt was backed by the entire Benfica board over the course of the season, but after a rather mediocre start to the 2024/25 season, Benfica pulled the trigger on the first coaching change in Liga Portugal this season and replaced Roger Schmidt with former coach Bruno Lage.

In this team analysis, scout report and tactical analysis, we will take a look at what problems Benfica has been facing over the first four games of the season, where the team needs to improve and what options Bruno Lage has after taking back over at the helm of his old club.

Roger Schmidt Formations & Players Used

If we are talking formations and Roger Schmidt, there is not much to talk about to be honest.

During his entire career, Schmidt has utilised a hybrid 4-4-2/4-2-3-1-formation, a 4-4-1-1 if you will.

During his Benfica tenure, he has exclusively used this formation and that obviously means he has done so in the first four games of this season as well.

If we are looking at the personnel side of things, Schmidt has been facing the same adversity every Benfica coach has faced over the years.

Benfica might be a club that is able to develop and even buy elite talent for the team, but the club is not able to keep those players after a good season, they are dependent on selling.

Schmidt has had to cope with a lot of sales during his tenure: Just before he became head coach, the club sold superstar-striker Darwin Núñez, Enzo Fernández left Benfica after just half a season there, Alejandro Grimaldo left the club on a free transfer and academy product Gonçalo Ramos went on to PSG last summer.

Most of the time, the club is able to work through these types of sales with their great academy as well as a very good recruiting strategy, but they were hit hard this summer once again, we will take a look at that in just a bit.

For this season, this meant that the usual starting eleven featured Anatoliy Trubin in goal, a back-for consisting of Jan-Niklas Beste at left-back, António Silva and Tomás Araújo as the two centre-halves, Alexander Bah at right-back, a double-pivot with Florentino and Leandro Barreiro, Gianluca Prestianni as the number 10 right behind Vangelis Pavlidis up front with Fredrik Aursnes and João Mário flanking them as the wingers.

There have been multiple changes during the first four weeks of football for Benfica.

Jan-Niklas Beste got injured and Alvaro Carreras was pushed into the first eleven at left-back.

Experienced Nicolas Otamendi got put in at centre-back for a struggling Araújo in the latest game against Moreirense.

Just like Beste, Aursnes got injured and was replaced by Ángel Di María in the latest game.

And finally, captain João Mário left the club and was replaced in the starting eleven by Orkun Kökcü for the last two games of Schmidts reign at the club.

Benfica Coping With Sales & Recruiting

As stated previously, Benfica are not a club that keeps their key players for extended periods of time but rather prefers to sell them at the peak of their market.

Roger Schmidt obviously knew about that when he signed with the club and had experience with similar situations when he worked for Red Bull Salzburg or Bayer Leverkusen previously.

After his great debut season, the club was not hit with a huge wave of sales, which was rather surprising.

Still, they lost their top-striker Gonçalo Ramos to PSG in the summer of 2023 for a fee of €65m and this sale still has some consequences on the mediocre start to their season this year.

In terms of recruitment, Benfica takes the same approach they have taken for years: Recruiting young players from all over the world and promoting their elite academy talent into the first team.

This leads to talented teams, but if we are looking at the players that Benfica brought in during Schmidt’s term, they have not recruited a lot of established players to boast the team instantly, but they have invested heavily in the future by buying a lot of under-23-players, forcing Schmidt to develop these players.

Ramos was an elite striker for Benfica and the club knew they had to replace his production, so they invested heavily in striker Arthur Cabral last summer.

Unfortunately for them, the transfer did not work out as they intended.

This meant Benfica had to replace the offensive production of Ramos in a collective way.

Players that were already at the club, like striker Rafa, captain João Mário or winger David Neres took a leap last season and stepped up big time for Roger Schmidt.

Especially Rafa stepped up in an important way for Benfica as he went on to score 22 goals and provided 15 assists over the course of last season.

Unfortunately for the club, Rafa left on a free transfer to Benfica, where he was later joined by João Mário.

David Neres was sold to Naples this summer as well, leaving Benfica with a gaping hole in their offensive production.

On the defensive side of the squad, Benfica also lost Morato, who was a regular player at left-back and centre-back for Roger Schmidt last season.

This meant that Benfica had a lot of work to do over the course of the summer transfer window.

Surprisingly, the team has decided to take another route this summer, but before we need to talk about what players Benfica brought in, we have to talk about the players that Benfica lost over these last two months.

While the newly recruited players are also 25 or younger for the most part, with only Renato Sanches being an exception at age 26, Benfica has invested their money in more established players with multiple years of experience in European football.

Also, their focus shifted from South America and southern Europe to players from more established leagues, like the German Bundesliga, the English Premier League or the Turkish Süper League.

One of the priorities of the club was to reinforce their attack, because after losing Ramos, Rafa, João Mário and David Neres in the span of 12 months, they have had major problems with that part of their squad.

To achieve this goal, Benfica made a couple of transfers this summer, including Zeki Amdouni (loan with option to buy from Burnley), triggering the buy option for Benjamin Rollheiser and signing Kerem Atürkoglu from Galatasaray.

Vangelis Pavlidis Radar Map

The most important signing for their attack is their new striker, Vangelis Pavlidis.

Pavlidis was signed from AZ Alkmaar in the Dutch Eredivisie for €18m, a very large sum for Benfica.

The 25-year-old Greek striker is supposed to fill the void that was left up front for Benfica ever since Núñez and Ramos left the club, respectively.

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