Porto, Sporting or Benfica: who suffers most from call-ups? | OneFootball

The first international break of the 2025/26 season once again causes a real exodus from the squads of the main teams in the Primeira Liga: Sporting, Benfica, and FC Porto see many of their players absent, which affects preparations for upcoming domestic and European fixtures.

We’ve tallied up the players who will be available and those who have been called up to their national teams for the lions, the eagles, and the dragons.

Lage with… eight players available

Benfica’s first team returned to training at Seixal after the hard-fought victory in Alverca with only eight players available to Bruno Lage. They are Samuel Soares, Tomás Araújo (recently recovered from injury), Enzo Barrenechea, Diogo Prioste, Gianluca Prestianni, Fredrik Aursnes (who has already retired from the Norwegian national team), Henrique Araújo, and the new signing Lukebakio.

In total, the eagles released 18 players to their respective national teams: Otamendi (Argentina), António Silva (Portugal), Richard Ríos (Colombia), Pavlidis (Greece), Barreiro (Luxembourg), Dahl (Sweden), Schjelderup (Norway), Trubin and Sudakov (Ukraine), Dedic (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Ivanovic (Croatia), Gonçalo Oliveira and João Veloso (Portugal U21), Obrador (Spain U21), Leandro Santos and João Rego (Portugal U20), Joshua Wynder (USA U20), and Diogo Ferreira (Portugal U19).

The eagles return to competition on September 12, hosting Santa Clara in the 5th round of the Primeira Liga, and four days later they will also host Qarabag at the Luz in the opening of the Champions League.

At Sporting, Rui Borges takes the opportunity to call up academy players

Rui Borges led Wednesday’s training session in Alcochete—the first since the home defeat in the Clássico against FC Porto—with the club missing 14 players who left for their respective national teams.

Called up were: Rui Silva, Francisco Trincão, Pedro Gonçalves, and Gonçalo Inácio (Portugal), Ioannidis and Vagiannidis (Greece), Zeno Debast (Belgium), Giorgi Kochorashvili (Georgia), Morten Hjulmand (Denmark), Luis Suárez (Colombia), Geny Catamo (Mozambique), Geovany Quenda (Portugal U21), Rodrigo Ribeiro (Portugal U20), and João Simões (Portugal U19).

In light of these absences, the lions’ coach called up six players from the B team: Rafael Besugo, Samuel Justo, Bruno Ramos, Lucas Anjos, Rafael Nel, and Rodrigo Dias, who had the opportunity to showcase themselves to the head coach of the national double champions.

Due to injury, Nuno Santos, Daniel Bragança, Maxi Araújo, Ousmane Diomande, and Hidemasa Morita remain absent.

Sporting returns to action on September 13, visiting Famalicão, and enters the Champions League on September 18 at Alvalade, facing Kairat Almaty.

Farioli opted to grant extended rest

At FC Porto, there has not yet been a return to work after the victory in the Clássico: Francesco Farioli granted five days off to the squad.

The return is scheduled for Friday afternoon at the Olival Training Center in Gaia, but without ten players on international duty: Diogo Costa, Jan Bednarek, Jakub Kiwior, Victor Froholdt, Deniz Gül, Alan Varela, Stephen Eustáquio, Pablo Rosário, Dominik Prpic, and Rodrigo Mora.

The dragons host Nacional on September 13 and visit Rio Ave on September 21, before their European debut in the Europa League on September 25 in Salzburg.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.