Eusébio_Cup
Eusébio Cup
Football tournament
The Eusébio Cup is a pre-season friendly football match hosted by Portuguese club S.L. Benfica since 2008. It has been played mostly at their home stadium, Estádio da Luz, with the two exceptions being the 2015 and 2018 editions (played at Estadio BBVA and Estádio Algarve, respectively).
The two-team competition is named after Portuguese international and former Benfica player Eusébio,[1][2] who presented the trophy to the winning team until 2013, before his death in January 2014. There were plans to extend the number of participants to four,[3] a move that Eusébio himself was in favor of,[4] but no changes were ever made in that regard.
The cup's first edition was won by Inter Milan, with the other winners being Benfica (2009, 2011, 2012, 2022), Tottenham (2010), São Paulo (2013), Ajax (2014), Monterrey (2015), Torino (2016) – in a match that also served to honour the memory of the Grande Torino team who died in the Superga air disaster[5] – and Lyon (2018). No invited team, also including runners-up AC Milan, Arsenal, Real Madrid and Newcastle United, has participated in more than one edition.
The invitational match has been played in late July and early August, and it was played annually and without interruption until 2016.[6] Despite two tries,[7][8] there was no edition in 2017. A year later, the Eusébio Cup returned as part of the 2018 International Champions Cup,[6] only to be revived four years later in Lisbon.[9] There will be no edition in the 2023–24 pre-season.[10][11]
