Things to know about Nacional
Last season: 6th
Qualified through: League position, qualified for second round
Coach: Ivo Vieira
Star: Luis Alberto Santos dos Santos (at least that’s the best name)
Links to Örebro: White and black. I know, it’s weak. Here comes a more tricky one. Marcus Rosenberg has scored against both teams (for Malmö against Örebro and for WErder Bremen against Nacional)
Comment: The nationalistic team from the pretty island of Madeira has qualified for the tournament for the fourth time. According to my sources it is useless to assess Nacional on the basis of last season’s performance as they have a tendency to rotate out the entire squad year on year and buy new ones, continuously financed by the local government. Indeed, their table position has fluctuated over the years and their previous attempts at European level were unsuccessful until the team in 2009/2010 managed to qualify for the group stage, where it finished third behind Werder Bremen and Athletic Bilbao but ahead of Austria Wien
This is how we beat them: I have not seen much activity on the transfer market yet but of course it is hard to play a new squad together in just a few weeks, should that be the case. Indeed, the only time they managed to knock out another team at European level was when they enter the qualifiers only in late August. But Portugal had three semi-finalists in 2010/2011 – Nacional would be a beautiful trip, but a tough one.
Chance of Örebro winning: 35%
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