Greetings and welcome back to the Brits Abroad. Have a brief absence last week to celebrate this great game turning 26, we head back to Portugal looking to win the whole lot this time. That cup final defeat still annoys me. Anyway, we’re also World Champions as England but qualifying for Euro 2004 is about to get underway. To the games!

Good morning and hello to you. I’m about to head out for my son’s fourth birthday party so if you land on this blog from X (Twitter, in old money) don’t be surprised if this misses the 10.30am post time. It is an annoying loss that these things don’t automatically post anymore. In any event, welcome back to Portugal where the Benfica Brits as nobody is calling them are fighting against the tide. After winning everything, I took the England job and for some reason our form dropped off a bit. So now we’re chasing down Sporting Lisbon and trying to defend everything and then all the same lads will go off to Japan for the World Cup. Wish me luck at the party – we’ve got a journey to go on first.

Good hello to you all! What a week it has been, for reasons I’ll not get into but the sanctuary of the weekend couldn’t get here fast enough. For Benfica, their squad full of Brits have made a mixed bag start to the season. It’s always been a mystery of this game where sometimes your unstoppable team just drop off. Did calling them all up for England prove to be a bad idea? I won’t have it. It was only a good idea. Let’s bring on the nonsense of this week.

Well hello to you. It has been a week since we last spoke, I hope your ascent into October was seamless. This weekend my son moved up to the next year group for his Saturday morning football group. It’s barely football but of the 30 kids in the class, 29 of them seem quite content to go it alone. Their parents sit on comfortable chairs sipping coffee at the side of the sports hall. The 30th child wants Daddy to run around with him, so there I am, like a sporty version of Will Ferrell in Elf, playing what’s the time Mr Wolf as a 6 foot 3 giant amongst children. That is in no way relevant to what you are here to read but sharing is caring, or something. The Brits Abroad meanwhile are proving to be giants amongst mostly Portugese men, having won the league at a canter and going on to become European Champions. How do you top that?

Good morning to you from probably sunny Portugal! We’ve totally transformed Benfica into a British winning machine. A contradiction in terms, perhaps, but when Kevin Gallen is scoring for fun and we’re top of the league, what’s not to love? Let’s see how the season plays out.

Greetings and welcome back to the Brits Abroad, where Benfica’s all British squad are having the time of their lives in Portugal. Having won the league and cup last season, there’s been no drop off as yet and a stellar start was made to this season. That’s stellar. Not Stella.