Sporting CP 3 GD Chaves 0

Sporting CP v GD Chaves
May 18th, 2024
Estádio José Alvalade
Matchday 34

The Warm Up

“And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain,” so sang Frank Sinatra in his song My Way which is incredibly apt given it's not only the last game of the league season, but it does of course provide the bed soundtrack for ‘Pelo meu Sporting’ which will reverberate from all four corners of the José Alvalade early this Sunday evening. Sporting will be looking to secure a 17th consecutive home win against a Chaves side whose relegation was confirmed last weekend and who will unfortunately for them finish the season rock bottom - you couldn't get two more contrasting fortunes on the pitch if you had tried. Come the final whistle Chaves will go off to prepare for life in the second tier whilst Sporting will be presented with the league title trophy and start their preparation in earnest for the following Sunday's Taça de Portugal against Porto. From all this I have but one question, namely whether or not Dário Essugo will be allowed to change into Sporting colours at full time to join in celebrations having spent the second half of the season on loan to Chaves? We famously saw tears on his debut as he became the youngest ever player for the club. You'd imagine we'd see a few more if the answer was no.

In the second round of 17 games Sporting have so far collected 44 points from a possible 48, conceding 12 goals in total of which just 4 have come at home resulting in 9 clean sheets overall during that period. They need just one goal to see them confirmed as having scored in every competitive game this season. If they win it will see them having completed the double over 12 sides, the others being; Vizela, Casa Pia, Famalicão, Moreirense, Farense, Arouca, Boavista, Estrela, Gil Vicente, Portimonense and Estoril

Last week's blog included the pointless statistic that Luís Neto has been booked on average every 18 minutes and 15 seconds on a ratio of bookings to playing time. Upon further inspection two of those bookings have come just from being a general nuisance on the sidelines. If anyone knows a certain José Mourinho and wants to suggest Neto would make a great member of his coaching setup for that exact reason going forward please feel free to make the recommendation. Maybe that's what the silver fox was doing in the executive box for the Dérbi - keeping a closer eye on the man regular readers will know I affectionately call the pirate as a potential future protégé to keep the pressure up on match officials during the game. Hopefully however the statistics to come are of more interest. I can't actually promise anything though.

You could make the argument that this game provides the perfect marker as to how far this current iteration of Sporting has progressed. Last season the corresponding fixture was played on August 27th, 2022 (Round 4) and finished Sporting CP 0 Chaves 2. The loss meant that Sporting had dropped 8 points from a possible 12 in the opening rounds of the campaign. Contrast that with this one and going into this the last fixture of the campaign they’ve only dropped 4 more points - in its entirety. It truly has been an incredible turnaround of fortunes especially when you consider only two of the starting XI from last have departed the club; Rochincha and Manuel Ugarte. Of the remaining nine only Luís Neto hasn’t been a regular starter during this campaign and of the four substitutes brought on in that game it was only Rodrigo Ribeiro (currently on loan to Nottingham Forest) who isn’t considered a regular player again this season. I’m not saying that last season Sporting didn’t have their moments, it was just more of the case that as and when they did happen, they tended to come outside of the league. Wins came in the Champions League against Eintracht Frankfurt and Tottenham, and in addition they also came away from the latter with a point having taken the lead through ex-Spurs player Marcus Edwards. That really was a fun night even with the guy behind me using my head sporadically as a leaning post. They knocked the eventual Premier League runners up Arsenal out of the Europa League on penalties and were desperately unlucky to lose 2-1 on aggregate to Juventus. They also made the final of the Taça da Liga losing 2-0 to Porto. In any other league if your manager won 67.64% of his games, you’d take that record as a marker of a great season, but in Portugal a win ratio of two thirds of your games is never going to be good enough for one of the big three. The 5 draws and 6 losses totalled meant that they didn’t even make the Champions League qualifiers.

My only hope before this campaign was that Gyökeres would score between 20 and 25 goals. OK maybe there was a little bit of actual expectation that he would get at least 20 goals based on what he did in the Championship but I wasn’t sat there secretly hoping he’d be the talismanic figure he has turned out to be who’d lead us to the title and a possible double if we avenge last season’s final defeat with a win in the Taça de Portugal next weekend. Truthfully after last season the thought of being title winners didn’t cross my mind once during the summer which genuinely makes it somehow all the more sweeter now it has actually come to fruition. We did win it right? I'm not going to wake up and find out I've been in a coma since February and it's all just been this amazing dream and actually we fucked it up in the first couple of rounds after the new year?

If you look at the minutes per goal ratio in the league last season, top scorer Pedro Gonçalves with 15 in total averaged a goal every 188 minutes. If you factored in goal contributions then it was a goal or an assist every 108 minutes, so less than 1 of either per 90 minutes. Trincão scored 10 and his average minutes for the same two metrics were 222 / 185. Nuno Santos, 8 goals – 284 / 175. Marcus Edwards, 7 goals – 323 / 189. Paulinho, 5 goals – 272 / 151. Chermiti, 3 goals – 280 / 168. Rochincha, 1 goal – 425 / 142 and Arthur, 2 goals – 535 / 214.

You could lay claim that Morita with 6 goals - 327 / 218 therefore actually had reasonable numbers, maybe respectable even - something beginning with r and ending in able. Rehydratable? (You're just being a dick now). Moving on. Pedro Porro having departed in the winter transfer window had clocked up 1,076 minutes playing time in the league in total and his goal contributions before departing averaged 135 minutes. Only one single player for Sporting last season had an average metric in the league for goal contributions which fell within the per 90 marker which was Matheus Nunes. As we know though he buggered off to Wolverhampton Wanderers having scored 1 and assisted 1 in the two games he did play for us, but I’m not entirely convinced you’d win many arguments with that statistic, so I’ll discount it.

This season though - it's like a 1990s advert for push up bras “Hello boys!” Paulinho has 14 goals – 89 minutes the average time between those – yes finally just as he looks set to depart he has become a goal a game forward and moreover, yes Alanis I totally agree, that is indeed ironic. Average time for goal contributions – 66 minutes. Chapeau.

Gonçalves has 4 goals less but to be fair to him, we do now have of course this season, a certain special someone who we shall come to in a moment. His average goals per minute ratio has climbed up to 227 but at the moment his average for goal contributions is 109 compared to the 108 last. In all competitions last season he scored 20 and he has 19 for this; assists for last 12 and for this 11.

So of course that leaves the talisman himself and the reason for the vast improvement in performance season on season – step forward Herr Viktor Gyökeres. The 2,825 minutes played (which is 1,246 more than Paulinho) have brought with it 27 goals to date and 10 assists. That’s a goal every 105 minutes and a goal or assist every 76 minutes. Goals in all competitions – 40. That’s not bad for a lad signed from Coventry City who no one in the Premier League was willing to put their hands in their pockets for is it? He’ll have to score 7 in this game to equal Bas Dost’s record in the 2016/17 campaign of 34 league goals, but he’s matched the 27 from the Dutch giraffe in the 2017/18 campaign. Bas Dost was, let’s be fair, ruthlessly clinical in front of goal and comparing their two overall games would be like trying to compare oranges to apples so I won’t go there. We’ve seen the new golden boy of Portuguese football pop up wide left looking like Nuno Santos when he was in form last season and still had the blonde locks on top. Blink and he’s suddenly out wide right pulling defences apart. He plays the 9, he plays the 10 and it wouldn’t surprise me if he could go in goal if the need ever arose. He’s a born winner, he’s the first wolf we’ve adopted since Marcos Acuña but unlike the Argentinian you have a fair idea of how he is going to tear into the opposition and it won’t be coming out of a challenge with half the players limbs gripped in between his teeth. God I miss Acuña out on the left, he was proper box office for a multitude of reasons, most of those considered to be not especially of the gentlemanly variety. Paulinho has a way to go to match him in the shit housery steaks. Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a Marcus Acuña diatribe.

What can you write about Gyökeres that hasn’t already been written? He is the teammate that you stand next to in the tunnel and be left convinced that you’ll win this game today with him on the pitch. He is the first player I have seen regularly since Dimitri Payet at West Ham where I have thought – as long as he’s on the pitch, he is the one person fully capable of dragging this side over the line even when things haven’t started their way. His introduction at half time whilst still nursing an injury in the Clássico is the prime example of that to score a brace and secure a point. It could be that we only have him for a season and become the footballing equivalent of a holiday romance. As they say it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. He has covered every blade of grass at the Alvalade several times over. No one can accuse him of not leaving it all out on the pitch. Now he has found himself a Portuguese girlfriend, maybe she can be the reason he stays if only for one more season. A lot will depend on Amorim staying in his role at the club and that’s fair enough if you’ve come to a club for the manager. The fans adore him, he’s got one medal in his pocket already and another to possibly come next weekend. He has more man of the match trophies than he has doors in his home which one envisages can be used as door stoppers. He’ll finish the league's top scorer, the best player in the league to boot surely and possibly as a double winner in his first season. He’s guaranteed Champions League football if he stays; fine weather in a beautiful city by the coast. What more can you want out of life? At 25 if he stays fit long-term he can earn the big money at 27 / 28 when he reaches his peak.

All we need now is to beat Porto to find out what his goal celebration is really all about. Imagine if he turns around and says it's because I ate 20 men in Coventry and washed them all down with a nice Chianti!

The money markets

Sporting CP 1/14 = 93.33% probability chance of win
Chaves 22/1 = 4.35% probability chance of win 

Team News

With the full team announced early doors there's no surprise to see Neto start as he makes his last ever appearance at the Alvalade. Diomande makes way. Nuno Santos swaps with Reis wide left and Hjulmand for Bragança. Otherwise as you were for last week's 1-0 win to Estoril. No final game for Adán who remains injured and has had it confirmed that he will depart the club at the end of the season.

First Half

Chaves players stand and give the title winners a guard of honour. Nice touch and must be especially gruelling given their relegation. Neto wearing the captain's armband does the honours with the coin toss. Surprisingly an awful lot of empty seats especially given the last title win came in Covid.

Sporting attack right to left wearing their new kit for next season which is frankly naff

1 First save of the game came from the Chaves keeper Pinto, who parried a cross from the right back out to Morita but the Japanese midfielder could only send it back to where it had just come from 12 yards

3 Sporting free kick from the right finds the head of Inácio unmarked whose effort strikes the right hand post and out to safety

5 Jo shanks his effort wide of the right post from 20 yards having dumped one of the defenders on his backside. Not sure if that was Inácio or Neto. Ran back pretty sharpish so let's go Gonçalo

7 Sanca cannot connect properly from six yards and the ball goes harmlessly wide of Pinto's right hand post. Chaves haven't come to make up the numbers. Bit of pride at stake as they bow out of the top flight

10 Pinto rushes out to claim the ball. Looks like he's handling a bar of soap as he makes contact with an opposing player and out it pops. Last week he clattered the forward in the opening ten. Maybe just a few nerves from the youngster again on this his home debut for Sporting

12 Penalty Sporting. Trincão the player who waltzed in between two defenders in the box. Not sure if it's been given for a pull back on his arm or the resulting challenge which dispossessed him but either way it was awarded…However after a minutes delay the referee has now been sent to the monitor. The defender definitely pulled his arm back and had a go at the shirt

16 Well not speaking Portuguese I've no idea what the referee said but presumably it was along the lines of 'upon reflection I'm terribly sorry but I've changed my mind, no penalty'

19 Corner to Sporting which came from the defender handling in the box. That's not just hit one arm but two and he nearly caught the bloody thing there. Referee is right behind the defender so he won't have seen it but surely that's night and day on the monitors if VAR are watching

20 Referee goes to the monitor again…

22 I understood the word penalty and the referee pointed his hand towards the goal. Not sure why the defender was shaking his head at that decision

22 GOAL Gyökeres sends the keeper the wrong way and calmly drills the ball low onto the left hand corner. Sporting CP 1 Chaves 0. I reckon we could have a good 5 to 6 minutes additional time at the end of this half

26 I'm confused as to how it's not 2-0. Trincão has just lifted the ball over Pinto and the bar from 8 yards out. He'll be seeing that in his sleep for weeks. Not as bad as Edward's miss … no two misses earlier this season but not far short

32 Neto with a diving header from 8 yards brings out a save from Pinto to keep it at 1-0. I nearly bet him anytime at 14/1 to score. Not that he did but I did look and decided they wouldn't let him take a penalty and he'll probably only play 45. I'd still like him to find the net though

33 Gonçalves misses the ball totally and falls flat on his arse. He laughs and luckily for him Amorim walks away giggling like a school boy. This is turning into Carry on Sporting. Just need Kenneth Williams, Sid James and the rest of the cast to rise from the grave

37 GOAL Gyökeres pivots and gets his shot away from the edge of the six yard box on the turn to make it Sporting CP 2 Chaves 0. Beautiful neat passing movement on the right cut through the Chaves defence like a hot knife through butter to provide the Swede with the opportunity for goal number 29 of the league campaign

Plus four shown

+1 That's goal 30 of the season. Sporting CP 3 Chaves 0. Pinto should have done better there. the Swede was unmarked and set free on the left, dribbles into the box, made the space for himself to get past a defender who had made it back into the box and fires it past him from 8 yards. Referee is at the monitor again. Checking for a foul the other end of the pitch. The guys thrown himself at a Coates challenge and there's the minimum of contact there. Should be booked for simulation. As the referee announced his decision by the whistles I'm going no goal

+5 So free kick to Chaves 1 yard outside the box and still Sporting CP 2 Chaves 0

+5 Chaves down to ten men as Hjulmand goes down in the box. #40 Pius is making the VAR sign over and over and refusing to go. It did look incredibly soft. Not as soft as the decision to give the free kick and disallow the third mind you

+7 Pius finally leaves the pitch

+8 After all that ball goes behind for a Sporting goal kick which thankfully won't be taken as referee blows his whistle

Half time

Sporting CP 2 Chaves 0

Well that was farcical at times not helped by VAR but it doesn't matter. With Chaves down to ten you imagine Sporting are going to rack up the scoreline in the second half. Otherwise it's been as comfortable a half as you'd expect as 1st plays 18th in the league table.

Second half

Sporting get us underway. One change as Paulinho comes on for what could possibly be his last appearance at home for Sporting. Hjulmand the man to make way. In all the kerfuffle at the end of the first half I missed that he'd been booked. 

46 Correia heads into the ground and wide from 4 yards out with seconds on the clock. That came from another mistake wide left which saw Chaves break free from close to the halfway line. Let off for Sporting there

47 Esgaio booked for a foul on Correia. Referee has been conned by the players reaction there and Esgaio knows it as he wags his finger at the referee

49 Chaves close again but a defender must have got the last touch as the ball somehow goes over the bar from two yards

51 Chaves fans will be thinking why haven't you played like this all season. Irony as no free kick given as Coates stops and lowers his body to body check Jo who has the wind taken out of him as he collides into the Uruguayan

54 GOAL Sporting CP 3 Chaves 0. It took Sporting 9 minutes for anything of note this half but it was clinical when it came as Paulinho smashed it past the keeper from 7 yards with a first time volley. Wave from Mrs Paulinho in the box. Hjulmand dances on the bench to Free from Desire

56 The Sporting players all run to Luís Neto to congratulate him as his name is announced over the Tannoy. The crowd are all on their feet applauding and singing his name. Fair play to the referee for not booking him as it's taken him two minutes to get off the pitch. Coates back with the captain's armband. St Juste the man on

59 Pinto plucks the ball out of the air as a Gyökeres header from six yards is goal bound. He wants the match ball and goal number 30. Despite conceding 3 he's still looked the more assured of the two Pinto's book ending either side of the pitch

62 Pinto is down clutching the back of his right calf in his Stabilo bright pink coloured kit from a goal kick. Back on his feet after treatment for now at least

65 Goal 96 of the season for Sporting saw them go 3 ahead of Manchester City's total in the Premier League having played 3 games less. That's a sensational number from the Portuguese champions. Not quite the 102 at PSV after 33 games but still until tomorrow at least the second highest of any European club in top flight football. Bayern in the Bundesliga ended on 94. City however do face West Ham.

66 Chaves getting closer as Correia shoots from 20 yards and the ball goes inches wide of the left hand post

69 Gyökeres shakes off his marker again and his shot from inside the D goes low and a yard past the right hand post

70 Incredibly subdued atmosphere in the stadium. Has more the feel of a pre-season friendly than a title celebration

71 Morita and Esgaio make way for Edwards and Bragança. Could well be the Englishman's last appearance at home for Sporting as well.

75 You could almost hear a pin drop in the stadium right now it's that quiet

75 Pinto kept it at 3-0 as the ball cannoned off his defender on the edge of the six yard box and flew back towards goal. Someone owes him a pint for that

77 Finally some life in the stadium as firecrackers and smoke bombs are let off from the end behind Pinto in the Chaves goal. Varandas will be shaking his head going FFS that's another fine

78 The fans stop long enough to let a Sporting attack develop before setting off another round. Some of the fans have been jolted into life by the pyrotechnics as chants of campeões now ring out. They've shown the view from the back of the stand and it's fair to suggest the fans at that end won't see a fourth if it's scored in the next minute through all the smoke

80 Pinto saves again as Sporting break. Paulinho fired low from 10 yards not that you'd really have seen it through all the smoke

81 Yellow card shown to Sylla for a foul on Trincão and free kick to Sporting 20 yards out

82 Diogo Pinto replaced by Silva who beams a smile as his name is read out on the Tannoy. Another debutant for Sporting and he becomes the fourth keeper to play in the league this season for the club

82 Gonçalves gets the ball over the wall but it clips the top of the bar. Which Wally claimed Sporting would rack up the score in the second half?

88 Corner to Chaves. All credit to them they've had their moments this game. Snap shot from Morim on the edge of the 18 yard box sails into the stand

Plus two indicated

Full time

Sporting CP 3 Chaves 0

The Final Word

So that's it for another league campaign. All that's left to do is lift the trophy and officially be crowned Champions before we're back next week for the final game of the season Vs Porto in the final of the Taça de Portugal. 17 home wins out of 17. 29th league goal of the season for Gyökeres as he finishes the league's top scorer working on the factor that Banza is unlikely to hit 8 against Porto in the evening game to draw level with him. Goal number 20 in all competitions for Paulinho which is his best return in a league campaign for the Portuguese champions. Will it be his last game at home? Time will tell. If it is, it will come at a point where he's become a fans favourite all because of a song meant to take the piss for the fact of his supposed miserable misdemeanour which has irony of ironies turned around fans reactions to him. You could not have made that one up really. Guaranteed that someone in a Portuguese bar will be laying claim to making that song up to anyone who will listen.

Gyökeres with another man of the match performance but I'll save the final word for my pirate - Luís Neto, as he bows out on his Sporting career. Obrigado! It's almost a shame the referee didn't book him; it would have been the most fitting and apt end to a footballing career you've ever seen.