Italiano explains surprising Bologna changes with Benfica | OneFootball

Vincenzo Italiano explains why he made some surprising changes for Bologna in their Champions League trip to Benfica. ‘We want quality and fresh legs upfront.’

It kicks off at the Estadio da Luz at 20.00 GMT.

You can follow all the build-up and action as it happens from this game, Milan-Crvena Zvezda and Juventus-Manchester City on the Liveblog.

This was always going to be a tough ask for a club that hadn’t even qualified for European competition in decades and sold two of their best players over the summer.

“What I would like to see is character, the desire to play games of this level against strong opponents and today we also have the opportunity to play with quality, fresh legs upfront, and when we have the ball we’ll try to cause Benfica problems,” Italiano told Sky Sport Italia.

Italiano forced to reshuffle Bologna

Bologna’s players Riccardo Orsolini (R) and Lewis Ferguson celebrate the 1-0 victory after the Italian Serie A soccer match Bologna FC vs US Lecce at Renato Dall’Ara stadium in Bologna, Italy, 02 November 2024. EPA-EFE/SERENA CAMPANINI

Riccardo Orsolini, Charalampos Lykogiannis, Juan Miranda, Michel Aebischer, Oussama El Azzouzi and Niccolò Cambiaghi are out of action.

Stefan Posch steps in as a makeshift left-back, but there are surprises elsewhere with Lewis Ferguson Nikola Moro in midfield, plus Samuel Iling-Junior, Giovanni Fabbian and Kacper Urbanski behind Thijs Dallinga.

“There is a point where you play constantly and need to rest. Freuler and Lucumi also had international duty, with long journeys, we had to be careful not to over-do it with them. The players we are using this evening are all internationals, they have quality and we want to show that on the ball,” added Italiano.

“We said yesterday that Benfica are very strong in attack, they have a lot of talent and want to score goals, but undoubtedly that will also leave spaces for us and we need to make the most of those chances. We’ve seen in this tournament that we have created many scoring opportunities and I trust we’ll do it tonight too.”

Benfica have nine points from their five games in the Champions League so far this season.