{"id":37276,"date":"2015-07-25T12:04:36","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T16:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=37276"},"modified":"2015-07-25T12:05:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T16:05:21","slug":"benfica-falls-to-fiorentina-on-pks-in-hartford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=37276","title":{"rendered":"Benfica Falls to Fiorentina on PKs in Hartford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script src=\"http:\/\/player.espn.com\/player.js?playerBrandingId=7f85f640d356489798d964a67a833280&#038;adSetCode=5d80a8f4a1f545b0944606ef39cf05e2&#038;pcode=B4a3E63GKeEtO92XK7NI067ak980&#038;width=576&#038;height=324&#038;externalId=intl:2535592&#038;thruParam_espn-ui[autoPlay]=false&#038;thruParam_espn-ui[playRelatedExternally]=true\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Portuguese Liga champion Benfica played in front of a sea of red during Friday&#8217;s International Champions Cup clash at Rentschler Field, but were unable to reward their supporters with a win after falling 0-0 (5-4 on penalties) to Serie A side Fiorentina in East Hartford, Ct. <\/p>\n<p>A crowd of 15,791 witnessed the scoreless match go to penalties, where Fiorentina backup keeper Luca Lezzerini denied Benfica&#8217;s final penalty try, which came from the right foot of reserve Mehdi Carcela-Gonzalez.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nothing worries me at this point of the preseason,&#8221; said Benfica coach Rui Vitoria told the media through a translator following the match. &#8220;We did have some problems. We tried some different tactics today. It&#8217;s normal. In the second half, we were more organized. We had to reorganize after we had 10 players.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Friday&#8217;s match was a particularly physical affair that featured eight cautions before the interval, and a total of 38 fouls before penalties were employed. Benfica finished with 10 men after Luisao picked up his second caution in the 66th minute. <\/p>\n<p>Fiorentina&#8217;s Josip Ilicic created the best attacking moment of the evening when he fired a tough-angled shot that smacked off the crossbar in the 56th minute.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition in Hartford marked the first time Benfica played in New England since 2010, when they thrashed the Revolution 4-0 in a club friendly at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. <\/p>\n<p>Portuguese side FC Porto was originally scheduled to be Fiorentina&#8217;s opponent for Friday&#8217;s clash, but dropped out of the International Champions Cup tournament weeks ahead of its start. <\/p>\n<p>Benfica will return to action on Sunday at Red Bull Arena where they&#8217;ll play the New York Red Bulls. Fiorentina will journey back across the Atlantic to face Barcelona in Florence on Aug. 8. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Portuguese Liga champions were unable to get a win in Friday&#8217;s International Champions Cup clash against Fiorentina. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[26],"tags":[978,1242,1090,1243,248],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Benfica-1.png?fit=600%2C415&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37276"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37280,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37276\/revisions\/37280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}