Clube Desportivo Santa Clara v Sporting CP

Clube Desportivo Santa Clara v Sporting CP 

Thursday December 18th, 2025

Estádio de São Miguel

Taça de Portugal Round 5

The warm up

It's estimated that the human brain deals with a staggering eleven million bits of information per second. Thankfully we all have built in filters that sort all that information into manageable parts of data so our brains don't melt. I'm sure you'll all have heard of the expression that first impressions count and there's sound reasoning behind this well used adage. Your brain is applying a filtering system and when you meet someone new it quickly needs to ascertain whether that person is a threat to your wellbeing. This is particularly handy when walking through somewhere busy and you instinctively know by looking at a stranger that you should avoid them even if you don't know why.

Think of someone you know where your opinion of them differs vastly from someone else's opinion of them and you're left perplexed as to the reasons why. Chances are any two parties who hold differing opinions of a third person met them at a different time and in doing so have formed very different opinions by that first initial meeting. Say person A met them when they were having a really bad day, well their default opinion has been shaped by that outcome, nothing that other person does shifts their default position. Whereas person B met them on a good day when they were full of smiles and happiness. Even though person A might actually be right in that generally their demeanor is of someone miserable for example, person B always gives them the benefit of the doubt because their initial meeting was a positive one. Now imagine a footballer for me where your opinion differs vastly about them to someone else you know. You're sat thinking what game are you watching while I'm watching this one? Are you second screening? For example I've never seen Jude Bellingham have a good game for Real Madrid. Now admittedly I've probably seen him play at most 4 or 5 times which is a poor sample size but still I've never seen him have any impact on a game that I've personally watched, I've Jude blindness. The first game I ever saw him play in I looked up at half time to find out why he wasn't playing only to find out he'd been on the pitch for the full 45 minutes. Huh. Rarely if ever do our opinions change of a person. Most people live in an echo chamber and we seek out others who share our opinions rather than search out the possibility of someone with an ability to highlight errors in our judgement. Admittedly it's not just Jude blindness that I suffer from. I'm 47 years old now and I'm not going to list every player that falls under that category because we'll be here for an incredibly long time. However I'll give an example of an ex-Sporting player in the form of Paulinho who I'll often see posts for online questioning why he's not in the Portugal national squad to which my default thought was always that he'd not make it into my Sporting squad let alone get anywhere near the Portugal squad. However opinions can change, we can grow to see people in a new light. We're all fickle let's be honest. I grew to love Sebastián Coates despite all the seasons he carried his invisible caravan on his back before developing into the leader of men he became as club captain. I wasn't overly sold on Maxi Araújo for the first few months and then was able to change my opinion. I watched Fresneda against Atalanta and was guilty of writing him off and it was an appearance on the left wing in the Taça da Liga where I went wow, maybe I jumped the gun too early. You're probably now asking yourself what has any of this got to do with the forthcoming fixture against Santa Clara? Well as I pointed out first impressions count and I fucking hate Santa Clara and couldn't think of a fixture I'd like to sit through less than this one. I don't think anything can dissuade me from that opinion. I'm like a Blackpool stick of rock with the words fuck Santa imprinted all the way down my insides. The team from the Azores are the very definition of anti-football. They suck the life and soul out of you vampirically over the course of 90 minutes or if you're really unfortunate over the course of 120 minutes. This is a game of football that none of us need to sit through. They should play it in a closed stadium and not televise it and save us the pain and misery and just tell us what the end scoreline was. I've written more disparaging remarks about Santa Clara than any other team in the league and that includes the dirty pigeons across the road. My genuine reaction to seeing the draw was oh fuck off. That being said maybe you know someone who supports Santa Clara, maybe you enjoy watching Santa Clara, maybe you are a Santa Clara fan? If so maybe I'll see about having you sectioned under the Mental Health Act for your own sanity. 

So yes, our reward for beating AC Marinhense at home in round 4 is a tie in the Azores against Santa Clara. Rather incredibly this is a year to the day since we played them in the same round of last year's competition which ended with the 2-1 win after extra time. Now I like a coincidence as much as the next person but this one I could have clearly done without. If it also goes into extra time I'll wish my brain was trying to process all eleven million bits of information every second and begins to melt and leak out through my ears and nostrils. 

OK so there's a chance they might pleasantly surprise me, however I very much doubt it. You know the script before the first whistle has been blown. It'll be a low block with ten outfield players holding strict lines in a concentrated space of about 18 yards from front to back. There'll be time wasting from the goalkeeper from every goal kick and who’ll go down injured at least three or four times during the game to receive treatment to non-existenent injuries. We'll invariably see one half where they don't offer a single attempt on goal. Mind you in the interests of fairness we did do exactly that in the second half of the last Dérbi de Lisboa so I'm not suggesting we're perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Trying something once and it working is great. Trying it another three times and it doesn't work would suggest they maybe you should try a different tact and approach. People are paying their hard earned money to be entertained, not to watch one side park the bus over and over and over. They could just go to the bus station and watch that for free. 

This fixture is fast becoming a magnet for red cards. Three came in the 2-1 away win in November, all coming after the 89th minute when the home players absolutely lost their heads. That followed the infamous sending off of Conrad Harder in the previous seasons 1-0 away win where a player from each side received their marching orders after the final whistle. The Dane's crime - saying Yeah. This same fixture one year ago to the day ended with the dismissal of Esgaio who hadn't even been playing and St Juste in extra time. Seven red cards in 300 minutes of football between two teams is some going especially given it's not a Clássico or a Dérbi. 

Since the two sides met in the Azores near the start of last month the islanders have played three times. Their first game after was the Taça tie that qualified them for this fixture, a 3-0 home win against UF Comercio e Industria. No me neither. Wendel opened the scoring with a first half penalty, with second half goals from Vinícíus and Calila. Next an away league game to Rio Ave where they fell behind to a Clayton goal on 23 minutes after the Brazilian striker had missed an earlier penalty. Santa equalised through a penalty of their own 8 minutes before half time from Sergio Araújo. The game finished all square at 1-1. Santa scored from their only big chance and that penalty kick contributed 0.79 to their overall XG of 1.04. The same naturally applied to the home sides XG of 2.10 though they created 5 big chances, missing 4 of those so Santa fortunate to come away with a point. Last game they beat struggling Casa Pia who are out of the relegation places only by virtue of goal difference at the time of writing. Santa missed two of their three big chances but the one they took through Venancio in the tenth minute was enough to secure a 1-0 victory. The XG 1.39 to 0.29 and the visitors restricted to just five attempts over the 90 minutes. Next up for Santa an away trip to Braga on the Monday which will mean two days less rest than Sporting however the lions will have played six times in the space of the two fixtures between each other compared to Santa's four, two of which were Champions league games and the other a Dérbi. 

In the markets 

Santa TBC 

Draw TBC

Sporting CP TBC