Famous for attacking football at Benfica, Bruno Lage’s decision to park the bus against Bayern Munich quickly backfired.
Bayern pummeled their opponent’s goal with 24 shots to one, and somehow didn’t score more in a 1-0 victory.
However, it was still a defeat for Benfica and Lage, their second in the Champions League, drawing plenty of criticism.
And things got more awkward post-match when Lage was defending his tactics in his press conference, only for Benfica‘s press officer, Ricardo Lemos, to be heard telling him ‘take responsibility’ with Lage replying ‘how?’
Lage did go on to take ownership for a disastrous set up, saying: “I’ve already spoken to the players. This was my strategy, I told them that this was my idea. We’ve already closed this game and we’re already thinking about FC Porto.”
However, those comments didn’t stop Benfica’s players expressing their negativity towards Lage’s tactics.
Summer signing Jan-Niklas Beste said post-match: “We couldn’t get out of the transitions because we didn’t have many players up front and we had to rely on long balls.
“The plan didn’t work. As I said, it was difficult to attack because we lacked players up front.”
Renato Sanches struck a similar tone, adding: “We had a game plan but we couldn’t execute it tonight. We’ll work on that and try to do better in the next games.
“I think the lesson is to try not to respect our opponents too much, because we also have quality. Any Benfica player has quality and sometimes we get to the end of games with the feeling that something was missing.”
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