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2005–06 in Portuguese football


The 2005–06 season in Portuguese football saw Porto, led by Co Adriaanse, clinch their 21st title and win the Taça de Portugal. Sporting CP secured second place, which gives them a direct entrance into next season's UEFA Champions League. Benfica had a disappointing season; however, they returned to the spotlight of European football with a good run in the Champions League, reaching the quarter-finals.

Braga and Nacional challenged Sporting CP, Benfica and Porto for a major part of the season. Nacional, in particular, broke up "Big Three" for most of the season, defeating Sporting 2–1 at home in a memorable victory before ultimately falling away towards the end of the season. Braga finished the season in fourth place and Nacional finished fifth in the table after having slipped all the way to seventh at one point. Two famous Portuguese clubs, Vitória de Guimarães and Belenenses, were relegated.

Also of note was the suspension of Benfica midfielder Nuno Assis after testing positive for a banned substance in a league match [1]. This positive test has been challenged very aggressively by Benfica's management, as the tests seem to have failed to follow proper procedures [2], as 72 hours passed between the collection of the sample and the tests.

Early in the season, Benfica won the SuperCup Cândido de Oliveira in a match against previous cup winner Vitória de Setúbal.

In European club competitions, Benfica reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League after eliminating Manchester United in the group phase and title-holders Liverpool in the last-32, only to be eliminated in the quarter-finals by eventual Champions Barcelona. Meanwhile, Porto had a relatively poor European season, failing to qualify through the group stage and finishing fourth in their group, missing out in a spot in the 2005–06 UEFA Cup final phase. Sporting was eliminated in the third qualifying round of the Champions League by Udinese and, after demotion to qualification for the UEFA Cup, was eliminated at the hands of Halmstad. All Portuguese teams failed to qualify for the group stage of the UEFA Cup save for Vitória de Guimarães, which surpassed Wisła Kraków, but failed to progress past the group stages.


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