As you should know by now, Manchester United regularly have scouts across the world, watching football and, well, scouting.
Portugal is a particular favourite location for them, with barely a week goes by without them having a scout in attendance at one of the games.
Benfica have been a club they have regularly followed down the years, and that continues to this day, with this week seeing a Manchester United scout take in their 1-0 win away to Gil Vicente, according to A Bola.
As is often the case, there is no specific mention of who they may have been there to look at, although centre back Ruben Dias is the obvious one.
There is also a chance they were there to look at left-back Alex Grimaldo given their need for a left-back, although Brandon Williams’ emergence puts doubt into such an idea.
The more likely answer is that they were just to see if anyone caught the eye, in which case they will have been sorely disappointed.
In a bland game, decided by Carlos Vinicius’ 17th-minute goal, most of Benfica’s players were given threes (out of five) and sevens (out of ten) by Record and O Jogo respectively, so there were no real standout performers.
Odysseas Vlachodimos was handed a four by the former and thus became their man of the match, but given David de Gea has signed a new deal at Old Trafford, that will make little difference to United scouts anyway.
The aforementioned Dias and Grimaldo received sixes from O Jogo and threes from Record, so United will probably want to do a little more scouting if they are to move for either of them as well.
