His first contact with the ball is in Benfica’s half, on the edge of the area and with the goal in sight, surroundings that do not compromise his calm. On the left, he receives the pass from Nuno Santos with his right foot, opens his body for the game with the reception, pretends that he is going to take the action to the center of the field, but no, the five touches he makes in his debut action in the derby They are intended to deceive the direct marker, dig his feet into the grass, look for the refuge of his preferred left foot and create space for a cross that doesn’t reach Paulinho. The attempt carried the small area, did not threaten the goal and its outcome, two seconds later, attested to one of the reasons why Daniel Bragança was a starter, for the first time, in a derby that was truly decisive.
About 15 meters from where he had crossed, he was the quickest to react to the leftover cut coming from Otamendi’s head, claiming the second ball so Sporting could have a second attacking space. In the fifth minute, it was the first sustained play of the ball on the ground of the game, with some calm and patience, adjectives that reflect the refinement that the Portuguese brings to the contacts he has with the ball. What’s new about Daniel Bragança this season is the ability to be impactful when he doesn’t have it. More willing to do shovel work and sink his teeth into the knife in order to run with it well bitten into the team’s midfield duo, he left in Luz a version of himself that seems to be at the sweet spot after two thirds of the season and after an unsuccessful year without playing.
This Daniel Bragança succeeded the one who was already imperturbable with the ball, but docile without it, previously used by Rúben Amorim in less relevant matches or to calm the pace in games where Sporting had the result smiling at him. On Tuesday, this Daniel Bragança was a starter among the usual starters in the classic that was worth the final of the Portuguese Cup, flanking Hjulmand as a midfielder but peeking into the center-left zone in that dynamic role usually reserved for Morita and where intervention is called for in the construction of plays and, later, associations with attackers and movements that threaten the opposing defensive line. Daniel Bragança was all of this while assuming himself as the compass of the lions’ ball possessions.
The midfielder left behind a game at Luz. In Sporting, under pressure perhaps like never before this season, João Neves and Florentino bit every reception from the midfielders in the high block with which Benfica pressed the entire field. Daniel Bragança responded to this lack of modesty with an absence of fear to delay his actions with the ball, making the necessary touches to attract pressure and then releasing it on the player who was free. In the midst of the storm caused by the Reds to take time and space from the opponent’s moves, he was the most enlightened, being calm and patient with each intervention. Positioning himself a few meters in front of Hjulmand, he was the one who gave more life to the possessions of a Sporting team that suffered due to the way their rival fit their pieces into their opponents.
With Rafa and Di María responsible for the central defenders on the outside and the midfielders pairing up with their namesakes, Sporting had open lanes on the wings, on the outside, to get rid of the intense pressure that led Benfica to close lanes on the inside, because Aursnes and Bah also fell on Paulinho and Trincão, who appeared in the center to help the lions advance on the field with short passes. In addition to recovering several balls right after the team lost them, Daniel Bragança’s ability to resist pressure and not rush to decide what to do with the ball gave the lions the means to release Nuno Santos, on the left, several times during the first part.
In the second, he came to the idea that he had to run a little with the ball towards the area to focus attention before releasing a pass to the right, where Geny Catamo shot straight ahead. Minutes later, he approached Hjulmand in view of the siege that Benfica had mounted on him and the Danish player’s slip, he received the ball and realized that it was necessary to speed up a pass again for the Mozambican, who in the area invented the cross that led to the second goal. First, the presence of mind that led him to be patient, then made Sporting find their way towards the area where they could threaten the goal.
Three years ago, Rúben Amorim thought it was “a crime” for Daniel Bragança to “not have more minutes” because he would be “clearly a starter” if the team played with three midfielders, an admission from someone who is loyal to a system that harms the player given the characteristics he has . Next Saturday, he will probably not give up on the midfielder when he has to orchestrate the team that will receive Benfica back in the championship, arriving in April based on the pieces that give it the greatest foundations to approach the standards of play shown in the most recent phase. exuberant of the past era. Although it was only in April, but this is the fruit of another harvest, the Reds reached a peak in the last derby which, coincidentally, overflowed with the influence of Florentino Luís.
Starting for the sixth game in a row since the beginning of March, he got tired of stealing balls, extending his octopus-thief tentacles all over the field. Always connected to the chip and with the current feeding him in moments when the team loses the ball, Florentino is quick to use his keen sense of touch to position himself in order to be the first player to press in the area where Benfica loses possession. Always reducing the space for any opponents who may receive a first pass when the other team tries to release the recovered ball, he is the immediate stopper, the thief who steals from thieves.
There were several times when he cut off Sporting’s attempts to get out quickly, throwing himself onto the grass against passes, anticipating opponents before receiving the ball or closing their space when they were going to decide to touch the ball for the second time. In the periods in which Benfica held Sporting close to their area, in Florentino there was a recovery buffer right near the opposite area, which gave the team the ability to have openings after openings – in the second half, João Neves followed him closely . At the height of the Roger Schmidt era, during the first half of last season, he was the exponent of this ability that suffocated opponents in their midfield. This has long been recognized.
But, perhaps, it won’t be with the monstrous fiber of the display he left in Luz that he will have his hundred years of forgiveness. Florentino was like that in 2018/19, when Bruno Lage unceremoniously debuted him in the eleven in the middle of the season, in that champion Benfica, he also played just like that last season, before Schmidt really sat him on the bench when Enzo Pérez was sold and the coach dedicated himself to experiments in the middleweight duo. In all of them, he sacrificed his greatest asset in the way he wanted the team without the ball, reacting at the moment of loss, looking for solutions to collective problems that the Reds had with it, building plays.
Florentino has two national titles with Benfica and is, for the third time in his career and after two consecutive seasons of loan spells (between 2020 and 2022), having to prove his strengths which, because they are so obvious, seem to diminish the aspects of his game that were being diminished in the player’s perception. As we also saw, on Tuesday, in Luz, his primacy for simplifying does not take away his eye for trying vertical passes instead of just to the side, even if these excel at finding someone’s foot instead of trying to throw someone else’s in space. Florentino has no risk in passing, but he doesn’t limit the team to the point of jamming the ball; he may not feel the greatest comfort in the world when pressured from behind, so the simple aspect of his game saves him from bigger problems.
Being so good as a thief and having the good aggression he shows in ball disputes seem to reduce what people think of him in offensive moments. With confidence boosted by the performance full of recoveries and steals, he even saw a shot from the middle of the street close to the last five minutes of the derby, which hit one of the posts from close range.
Calm in his emotions, unchanging in the face he always wears on the field, Florentino proved to be his equal. It is still intermittent in Benfica’s eleven when the conversation about ‘who follows João Neves’ should translate into ‘why break up the team’ that Roger Schmidt is now nurturing. On the other side, the midfielder who runs with his chest straight, his torso straight and straight, with his left foot ready to give the ball pause, also fights against the intermittence. Daniel Bragança shares his birth in 1999 with Florentino Luis, for a generation trying to join the midfield of Lisbon’s rivals for good.