The 32-year-old is on his way to reaching 400 appearances for the Blues in all competitions since making his full debut 10 years ago and remaining a key player during Roberto Martinez's impressive first season in charge.
The starting XI looked fairly strong, but without Belgian World Cup stars, Kevin Mirallas and Romelu Lukaku, while Arouna Koné and Bryan Oviedo were still not fit enough to play. Joel Robles replaced Howard in the Everton goal after the jet lagged USA star had played nearly 20 uneventful minutes, Porto beginning to assert themselves thereafter, dominating possession.
Osman, among others, was seeing very little of the ball as the pink-shirted Iberian side moved the ball around at will. When Everton got rare possession, it seemed to be McGeady who was having the most trouble using the ball well, with too many poor passes.
But McGeady took advantage of a terrible clearance by the Porto keeper, playing in Naismith for a lovely sweeping shot just inside the post to give Everton a somewhat undeserved lead a few minutes before the break.
Record signing Lukaku was presented to the crowd at the break and received a splendid ovation. Muhamed Besic and Sylvain Distin came on at half-time, followed later by Browning then Stones.
Porto continued to frustrate the Blues with their much better ball control in the second half, while changes to both sides continually disrupted the flow of the game, Jackson levelling for Porto near the hour mark.
Browning (on for Baines) had a good shot on goal saved well before Osman missed a trademark header but that didn't stop him getting a well deserved standing ovation from the crowd after 86 mins.
After the match, Roberto Martinez addressed the absence of Gibson and Coleman; Martinez explained: "Darron Gibson has been working a lot in the last few days and we felt that we were running a risk with him, so he needed an extra day to recover and he will be involved on Wednesday [against Celta Vigo].
"Sometimes it's about giving players the right doses of work and Darron's not got a problem at all – it's just about making sure we don't take unnecessary risks with him."
"Seamus will be ready for the Germany trip and he should be involved in that game," Martinez added. "If not, we'll have a behind closed doors game the following week and we would expect him to be ready for the start of the season."
Michael Kenrick
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