Other than Mareque who didn't really impress during his time at Porto and Mariano who only now is starting so show anything, all our Argentinian signings have turned out class.
Starting with 'El Comandante' Lucho Gonzalez, arguably one of the most complete players in the world and a top 5 center-midfielder in Europe. He doesn't get much recognition outside of Portugal mainly due to Quaresma stealing most of the spotlight, but the fact is that Lucho is our most important player, that midfield without him plays like Benfica (= Crap).
He hasn't scored as much this season as he did in his 2 previous ones (only 1 goal in the league so far and 3 in CL, in comparison with his 10 in the first season and 11 last season), but he still contributes a lot, as he is our player with the biggest number of assists (13 -- you may check the full list
here ).
It's truly unbelievable how he isn't called up to the national team, a travesty if you ask me, like Domenech not calling Trezeguet to the french NT.
His price tag is 25m €, the team that gets him will sign a world class player, worth every single penny.
Then we have the league's top scorer, Lisandro Lopez. With still 10 matches to go, Lisandro has a grand total of 18 goals from 19 matches!
This has been his revelation season, his last two were nowhere near as good as this one, mainly due to him playing out of position. We all thought he was a forward who liked to cut inside from the wings and that's where he was playing for the past 2 seasons in our 4-3-3, but Lisandro is actually a striker. He was tried out at that position at the start of the season when Jesualdo was left without Adriano (injury) and Postiga (poor form). Lisandro did very well and earned his place.
I'll be honest, I didn't think he would be this good as striker, I honestly thought he was going to get wasted inside the box, but his amazing work ethic, constant movement on and off the ball, creates a lot of problems for the defender who has to mark him, therefore he appears many times alone inside the box to finish off our chances.
Heres an example
And now Ernesto Farias. We paid 4m € for him at the start of the season, his goalscoring record in Argentina was amazing, but Farias didn't impress one bit in the 4 matches he played on the first half of the season. Everyone thought that it was a wasted investment (myself included), but he has proven us all wrong.
When Tarik went to the ACN, there was a spot left for 1 of Postiga/Adriano/Farias/Mariano/Leandro.
Postiga never got his chances, was loaned out; Adriano started in the first match without Tarik, but didn't do too well; Mariano has been really shit so far (other than last week); Leandro never seemed like an option for Jesualdo for some reason; which leads us to Farias. He came off the bench in first match we played without Tarik, he scored a goal and made an assist in about 10 mins!
He looked really good out there, so he gradually started to get more playing time. On his first 2 starts for us, he scored twice in both matches!
Farias' great form put Tarik on the bench when the Moroccan returned from the ACN, and Farias continued to impress. Last week he played, IMO, his best match for us so far, he was working really well with Lisandro and Lucho. He made an assist, was unlucky not to score as he hit the bar in the first half.
We should continue to explore the Argentinian market, loads of great talents there. It's a shame we've missed out on Belluschi, but I'm sure there are other great players yet to be discovered by the rest of top clubs, so hopefully we'll be the ones to bring them to Europe.
The Argentina connection works for Porto
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