FC Porto league winners Benfica, reached the 1993–94 UEFA Champions League semi-finals and ended the season with a victory over Sporting CP in the Taça de Portugal final. In Robson's first full season, Porto claimed the 1994–95 Primeira Divisão title with a win at Sporting CP's ground and played Benfica four times to secure both the 1993 and 1994 stagings of the Supertaça. The beginning of the season had been clouded by the death of 26-year-old midfielder Rui Filipe, who had scored the club's first league goal. Robson's increasing health problems barred him from leading Porto in the first months of the
1996–97 S.L. Benfica season Portuguese Cup. With the advantage of receiving smaller teams at home in the knock-out stages, Benfica progressed to the semi-finals after beating Dragões Sandinenses in the quarter-final, meeting Porto next. On the last day of April, the club defeated Porto by two-nil with goals from Valdir and Edgar Pacheco, reaching a second consecutive Portuguese Cup final, where they enter as title-holders. On the league campaign, Benfica track record on the final six league match-days, was four losses, a win and a draw, losing fifteen more points, ending the season a record-breaking twenty-seven points from Porto, fourteen from Sporting. On 10