Southampton have been scouting Benfica regularly for quite some time, maybe down to the Ronald Koeman connection. The Premier League club seemed to up their scouting of Benfica after Koeman took over, with the manager also having been in charge at the Lisbon side previously.
At the end of the summer 2015 transfer window, Southampton scouted Benfica, and since then they’ve been one of the English clubs most in attendance at Benfica matches, even since Claude Puel took over.
In Portugal it’s the tradition that clubs release lists of scouts attending games, and these are then published by the Portuguese press. It’s not guesswork as to which clubs are scouting, but rather fact, the guesswork tends to come when trying to work out individual targets.
Benfica travelled to Porto on Sunday, in one of their toughest tests of the season, the match eneded 1-1. A Bola have confirmed that Southampton were one of the clubs in attendance. There’s any number of options they could be looking at, at Porto young forwards Andre Silva and Diojo Jota are rising to prominence, and both played well.
For Benfica, winger Salvio has been returning to his better form and central defender Victor Lindelof is repeatedly linked with a move.
Southampton keep building their transfer reports, and surely the club now has quite some expertise on Benfica and possible recruits from there.
