While Manchester United struggled to get their job done last night, as they needed a penalty shootout to beat Rochdale in the EFL Cup, club officials were working on something else.
Scouts from the Red Devils were busy with the Portuguese League Cup, where one of them watched Porto’s 1-0 win over Santa Clara, and the other saw Benfica’s goalless draw with Vitória Setúbal.
It’s newspaper O Jogo who reports the official’s visit to the Estádio do Dragão, while Record writes about the scouting at the Estádio da Luz, but neither of them points out who Manchester United were potentially watching.
Porto didn’t have a brilliant match, otherwise they would’ve won with a bigger score. New signing Shoya Nakajima finally stood out for the club, and their goal was scored by Diogo Leite.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to think of someone who did great in Benfica’s game. Ruben Dias, who’s been linked to Manchester United for a couple of years now, didn’t show any difficulty in defence, but that was all.
It’s now been a couple of years since Manchester United started scouting a big percentage of games involving Benfica, Porto and Sporting. The club’s attempts to sign players in the Portuguese market haven’t grown since then, but they are surely more prepared on the information front.
The visit to both games at once also shows that the Red Devils have more than one official in Portugal, and are keeping tabs on both clubs, regardless of how important the competition is.
But scouting doesn’t mean an interest in a number of players, so as long as they don’t see anything interesting, it seems the Old Trafford side will just keep looking.
