The club had three different coaches for the season, and not even one can be said to have had a successful spell. When the board decided to sack the first coach, the Spanish Julio Velazquez, they couldn’t imagine that the best part of the season would be the one with the Spanish coach in charge. Velazquez was ahead of the team in the first seven rounds, having collected 9 points thanks to three draws, two victories and two (away) defeats, the second of which caused the club directors to change coaches, calling Portuguese Quim Machado. The intention was clear: less focus on building an identity for future times, and more focus on immediate results. But the recipe was not that successful either: by the time the first half of the season arrived, the club had collected 14 points in 12 rounds with Quim Machado at the helm. Things improved significantly in the first rounds of the second half of the season: the arrival of striker Maurides and supporting forward Juanto gave the team some momentum and Azuis do Restelo grabbed a good 5 defeatless games streak. But a 0-4 defeat at Estádio da Luz started a disastrous sequence of seven consecutive defeats. In the middle of that streak, the board had decided to sack Quim Machado and bring a third new face to the bench: Domingo Paciência, whose best merit was a surprisingly yet deserved 3-1 win at Estádio de Alvalade, which was the only victory Belenenses had in the last 10 rounds of the season.
The aforementioned Maurides grabbed an interesting sum of 6 goals in only 12 games played, and was one of the highlights of Belenenses season. Should Azuis manage to keep him in within next season’s squad, fans should hope for more goals from the Brazilian striker. However, the most influential and consistent player of the season was unquestionably the midfielder Vítor Gomes, who simply cannot play badly, and even in the worst moments of the team managed to impress the public with very reliable performances in the midfield.
