He is the third top scorer in the squad and scores beautiful and important goals; has the second best minutes/goals ratio
Arthur Cabral scored the second goal in the team’s 3-1 victory at Farense, on Monday, for the 30th round of the championship, and reinforced his status as the third best scorer in the Reds’ squad, with 11 goals scored. this season, behind Rafa’s 20 and Di María’s 16, in the total of competitions.
Brazilian striker scored a great goal in the 34th minute
The 25-year-old Brazilian striker, who was hired this season to replace Gonçalo Ramos (for €20 million), is not an undisputed starter, nor even a regular starter, as is the case with his other two companions on the goalscorers’ podium, but even thus he shows a good relationship with the goal. In 41 games, 1,847 minutes on the field, he scored 11 goals, which represents a goal scored every 167 minutes, an average of 0.27 goals per game.
In this minutes/goals ratio he is second only to his compatriot Marcos Leonardo, who scored five goals in 405 minutes, an average of one goal every 81′. Rafa needs an average of 208 minutes to score and Di María 239 minutes. Tengstedt (who only has three goals this season) scores every 419 minutes on the field.
Interestingly, Gonçalo Ramos ended last season with 27 goals in 47 games and with 3,478 minutes of use, a goal scored every 129 minutes.
Schmidt’s choices
The hierarchy of strikers this season has been difficult to understand, but, with the exception of the games with Moreirense and Farense (in which the coach changed eight of the starters in the first match and five in the second), the choice of Roger Schmidt has largely fallen to the Danish Tengstedt, with Marcos Leonardo and Cabral as second options in turn.
Of the 41 games he played, Arthur Cabral only started in 18 but he has been struggling for months to adapt to the way of playing that Schmidt intends, even resorting, as A BOLA has already detailed, to a personal trainer to gain greater physical shape. And the truth is that, having not been enthusiastic from the start when he arrived, and was even the target of much criticism from the fans, the Brazilian goalscorer is giving a strong response on the field. The Brazilian scored considerably in his debut season and the goals he scored were beautifully executed and many of them were of great importance for the team.
It was he, for example, who scored the goal in Salzburg with his heel that allowed Benfica to fall from the Champions League to the Europa League, who scored (and assisted) in the 3-2 against SC Braga in the round of 16 of the Portuguese Cup, who scored and assisted in the quarter-finals of the Portuguese Cup with Vizela, who scored the goal in the 2-2 against Vitória de Guimarães, or the winning goal in the meager 1-0 against Casa Pia, a game in which he was released onto the field only after of the interval. And he scored on Monday, again with a heel, against Farense.
Arthur Cabral did enough to deserve more credit for the new season.
