Nuno Campilho hails Ivanovic’s rise, urges Benfica | OneFootball

Nuno Campilho wants to see Franjo Ivanovic on the field for longer. In this Glorioso 1904 Exclusive, our newspaper spoke with the well-known fan who shared his thoughts on the Croatian forward, commented on the performance in Arouca, and previewed the upcoming clash with Vitória de Guimarães, next Saturday, the 21st.

"Ivanovic deserves more playing time, the last two matches leave no doubt about it. However, that doesn’t mean taking the starting spot away from Vangelis Pavlidis, as both can play together, just like at the beginning of the season. That’s something I support, even if it means Rafa loses his starting place," he began, in an exclusive interview with our newspaper, expressing his wish to see a strike partnership between the 22-year-old player and the Greek forward.

Regarding last Saturday’s match, Nuno Campilho considered the victory fair, but complicated, pointing out some criticisms. "Difficult, but largely fair. Even so, Benfica showed the usual difficulties in building up play in organized attack, combined with poor decision-making in the final third, which, unfortunately, is also a recurring issue. In my opinion, we need someone who can read the game and orchestrate offensive plays, which, in the absence of Fredrik Aursnes and with Georgiy Sudakov not starting, we don’t have, since neither Richard Ríos nor Leandro Barreiro have those characteristics. Both fought hard to recover the ball and occupy spaces defensively, but added little to the attack, which ends up flowing more down the flanks than through the middle," he expressed.

Benfica decided to impose a media blackout, in protest against the disciplinary sanction imposed on José Mourinho by the Disciplinary Council. The Benfica fan supports the Club’s decision and took a jab at the rivals. "Blackout in Arouca? Totally agree, considering that the punishment for Mourinho is unfair and the suspension of that same punishment, after appeal, only seems to have an effect when other teams make the request," he said.

To conclude, Nuno Campilho discussed the upcoming match against Vitória de Guimarães and has no doubt it will be a tough game, even with the visible tactical and emotional weaknesses of the Guimarães team. "It will certainly be one of the most difficult matches until the end of the season (and I say this fully aware that we still have to go to Alvalade). This is because Vitória has a good team, and neither the results crisis nor the change of coach (which hasn’t had any effect yet) will make me think otherwise. In fact, Vitória’s players are surely eager to show their quality again, but, although I wish them no harm, I hope they only do so after the match at Luz," he concluded.

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