Sporting CP v FC Alverca

Sporting CP v FC Alverca 
Sunday August 23rd, 2026
Estádio José Alvalade 
Matchday 3

The warm up 

After a decade plus of following Portuguese football, even now I still find myself amazed by the disparity in the size of their countries football clubs. Now of course disparity in football is clearly nothing new, for example the chasm between a top Premier League side and a club in the lowest English footballing tier - League 2 is now wider than ever. This is also generally replicated worldwide from the top division through to the lower tiers, however in Portugal the chasm just in the top flight is incredibly stark in itself alone. Sporting and Alverca are separated by just 22.5 kilometres in distance from each others respective stadia, but in terms of size and stature in the Portuguese footballing landscape they’re worlds apart. The lions have a reported 179,208 sócios (registered members) and those are just a fraction of the millions of fans said to follow the lions worldwide ranking them among the top ten largest football club memberships worldwide. FC Alverca by comparison have a reported 6,000 registered members. As one of the 18 top flight clubs in the 2025/26 season, Alverca held the tenth highest average attendance in the league which as a statement in isolation would read as being quite impressive, especially for a side who were only promoted from Liga 2 in the summer. However when you quote the figures involved you get a sense of how small the Portuguese top flight really is outside of Os Três Grandes consisting of Benfica, Porto and Sporting. Their average attendance was just 2,752 across their 17 home league games. Note the average attendance for the league wasn't much better either in fairnes and was just 11,980. The lions average attendance for the basis of comparison was 42,408. Given their proximity to Lisbon, they’ll have certainly benefited from large travelling support for their games against Benfica and Sporting and it will come as no surprise to learn that Benfica, who are Portugal’s largest and biggest supported club by a considerable distance, provided Alverca with their highest matchday attendance last season. So in truth even that average of 2,752 is artificially inflated by the large travelling support of the two Lisbon giants. Benfica’s average attendance at Da Luz by the way was a whopping 58,690 in a season that despite going unbeaten across all 34 league games, saw them win nothing. Benfica have more than double the registered sócios of Sporting with 400,000 plus. They’re also believed to benefit from more than 14 million supporters worldwide. Taking all these figures into account, there are some stark and obvious reasons why Portugal has only ever had five winners of the top flight and of all those titles won, only two seasons have ever been won by a club outside of Os Três Grandes since its inception in the 1934/35 season – Belenenses and the now defunct Boavista. In eight years’ time when it celebrates its centenary year it’s pretty safe to assume that only five clubs will still have only been crowned Portuguese champions. This isn’t a league where fans of any other club outside the big 3 start the campaign with dreams of winning the league, but ironically it’s Sporting last season who may have at least given smaller clubs some hope of glory in the countries two cup competitions having lost the final of the Taça de Portugal to Liga 2 side Torreense and being knocked out of the semi finals by the eventual Taça da Liga winners Vitória SC even if the latter competition is not open to all member clubs. All told even the most ardent and optimistic of Alverca fans would admit that a win in the Taça de Portugal would be just a pipe dream I'm sure.

Alverca’s budget is believed to be approximately €12 to €15 million annually. Their revenues generated sit around the €5m mark with about €3.6m of that coming from TV rights. The short gap in funds is being plugged by the clubs ownership. Their majority owner is a familiar name in world football, one Vinícius Júnior. Yes the Real Madrid star, who is reported to own between 70 and 80% of the clubs shares. Including loan signings, Alverca brought in a staggering 34 players over the course of their first season back to the top flight which included the ex-lion Gonçalo Esteves who joined on loan from Udinese. Of those signings only 3 are believed to have come with a fee attached; Figueiredo €750,000, Steven Baseya €400,000 and Amorim €310,000. Portugal is the land of transfers with zero cost attached in terms of fees paid so this is not exclusive to Alverca, free transfers pretty much rule supreme. Yes, you might have a higher additional cost than it actually being ‘free’ with the savings been passed onto the player in some form of signing on bonus, but we’re not talking about Premier League levels of benefits to the players in terms of renumeration.

Traditionally in Portugal the Competition Regulations assigns clubs individual ownership rights to broadcast each of their 17 home league matches every season. This is the clear reason for the disparity in Portuguese football. Os Três Grandes have the largest fan bases of all Portuguese clubs and therefore it stands to reason that they are able to negotiate the largest TV broadcast rights deals which means any competitive balance in the league has always been undermined. Ask for an example of a shock title win in the history of football and the obvious example that comes to mind for most fans would be Leicester City winning the Premier League title. However I would argue that the title wins of Belenenses and Boavista in Portugal both outweigh the achievement of Leicester in winning the Premier League. They were after all backed by billionaire owners even if they were competing against some of the giants in European and World football. For Portuguese minnows they really are like Sisyphus rolling the rock up a hill every season just waiting to get flattened by the big boys at some point during their 34 game season. Occasionally you get a shock result, relegated AVS beat last seasons title winners FC Porto, but that didn’t help them avoid the drop or stop the Dragoes from being crowned Champions. TV revenues are set to switch to a central commercialised system from 2028/29 onwards. That should in theory help close the gap between the clubs in the top flight but in reality the largest three are so far ahead, it will most likely mean a tightening and bunching together of the clubs below. If the TV income of the big 3 is drastically reduced it will just force them to have to sell more of their top talent every season to balance their books. A slightly increased parity for smaller clubs will most likely mean a bigger disparity for Portuguese clubs when they compete in European competition and also mean a lesser product domestically for the TV companies with the league best talent being sold on an even more frequent basis. It’s rare clubs don’t get at least a couple of seasons out of a player before being sold onto a bigger league but I envisage that the bigger boys may be forced to sell one or two every summer now if the reduction in TV revenues is that vast. We’ll watch that space and see what happens as and when the time comes. 

I think if my memory serves me correctly Alverca changed their entire playing squad bar one or two players following promotion so it's no surprise to learn they've been a lot less active in the markets this summer twelve months on. I'm sure their owners would have been thrilled with their eventual eleventh place finish in the table. They missed out on tenth place to Estoril by virtue of their head to head record finishing on 39 points apiece. Portugal only has two confirmed relegation places with the side finishing third from bottom going into an end of season play off against the side who finishes third in Liga 2. Alverca and Estoril finished 9 points above Casa Pia in 16th place who secured another season in the top flight as they managed to beat Torreense in the play offs which in fairness was something that the lions didn't manage to do in the final of the Taça de Portugal in May meaning Portugal will have a Liga 2 side playing in Europe this campaign. Lord help the Portuguese co-efficient.

Alverca’s final overall league record read; played 34, won 10, drawn 9, lost 15, GF 35, GA 52 giving them a goal difference of -17. In truth it was a poor league last season so Alverca cannot rest on their laurels this campaign. At one stage AVS were on course to be relegated with the fewest points ever of any top flight side. CD Tondela who came up as Champions went straight back down finishing second bottom. Santa Clara, who finished in the European places the previous summer, were sixth bottom last time out. Estrela are in huge financial difficulties and expected to struggle. Académico Viseu will surely have their work cut out for them following their promotion. Given the size and support of Marítimo who came up as champions I'd suggest that of the two promoted sides that they'd be better placed to survive but we'll see. The surprises come from 5th to 18th places in Portugal not from 1st to 4th. 

Their home record read; played 17, won 7, drawn 5, lost 5, GF 18, GA 23. I'll repeat one of my favourite arguments in football that a 1-0 win will get you as many points as a 5-0 win will. Whilst playing for a draw is beneficial for smaller sides, going unbeaten across an entire season for Benfica didn't help them with too many dropped points from drawn games. Away from home, again played 17, winning just 3 times, drawing 4, losing 10, GF 17, GA 29. Only Estrela and AVS had a worst away record so they'll have been thankful they had the tenth best home record to balance out their season. They clearly need to replicate that same home form and find ways of at least turning some of those losses into draws. 

They were guilty of underperforming their XG of 40.1. Of the 35 goals scored 21 were from open play, 8 from set pieces, 5 penalties and 1 own goal. Top scorer was Marezi with 9, Figueiredo got 6, Lima with 5 and the remaining goals were shared by 11 players on 2 or 1 goal apiece. According to Fotmob Marezi was picked up as a free agent by Championship side Portsmouth at the end of July so that's 9 goals they'll need to replace from somewhere. According to the internet however Portsmouth paid £6m to Almería for his services which is why ladies and gentlemen when something doesn't read right you double check the information shown. Sandro Lima has also left for Aarat on a free transfer so that's 2 of their 3 top scorers gone and it's not like either were exactly prolific. 

Transfer business up to and including August 2nd:

Incoming 

Lucca Giuntini from SC Mirandela (Free)

Marco Essimi from Dunkerque (Free)

Toni Tamrit from Villarreal B (Free)

Samy Jr. Merheg from Braga (Free)

Vivaldo Semedo from Watford (Loan)

Tiago Octavia - Leça (Free)

Jhonatan - Athletic Club (£155,000)

Yaya Bojang - OB (Free)

Noah Raveyre - Paul (Free)

Outgoing 

Sandro Lima - Ararat (Free)

Felipe Lima - Benfica B (Loan)

Lincoln - Bursaspor (£1.7m)

Marezi - Loan spell ended

Note any future business between the time the two sides meet on Matchday 3 will be updated below in time along with how they performed on Matchdays 1 and 2.

Last season Alverca had the misfortune of having to go to the José Alvalade twice in the space of just four days. They were routed 5-1 in the Taça da Liga with goals from Quenda (2), Blopa (2) and Ioannidis. Despite scoring five the lions registered only 10 attempts for an XG of just 1.65. High goal tally with a low Xg normally is suggestive that a goalkeeper has had a complete mare. Matheus Mendes' rating was a lowly 3.7 which supports that theory perfectly . They did at least improve to only lose 2-0 in the league, holding out until the 67th minute when Ioannidis scored again against them breaking the deadlock and Pedro Gonçalves added the second. Ironically for that game Sporting had 27 attempts for 2 goals and an Xg of 2.34. Fast forward to March and Marezi’s goal on 82 was scant consolation in a 4-1 loss. Pedro Gonçalves scored a brace, Suárez and Geny scored the other two goals. So three games, three wins for Sporting at an aggregate scoreline of 11-2. As I wrote at the start, they are separated by just 22.5 kilometres but in reality for now they're miles apart in terms of size and quality on the pitch. 

So fundamentally for the season ahead they need someone capable of putting the ball in the net and where possible someone to also keep the ball from going in at the other end. Let's face it football at its basic fundamental principle is not a complicated game is it? Estoril scored 19 more goals than Alverca to finish level on points with them and interestingly they actually conceded five more goals in addition. It is however fair to suggest that at one stage towards the back end of last season Estoril's games were probably some of the most entertaining played in Portugal. Certainly better than the shit being served up every week by the eventual league champions under their new mister Farioli. 

At the top their mister Custódio has been replaced by Sérgio Ferreira who was previously coach of FC Porto’s U19s. Custódio had only taken over from Vasco Botelho da Costa the summer previous though in fairness did at least last twelve months in post which is more than Sousa managed at Braga and Vitória. da Costa went to Moreirense and at the time of writing at least is still their mister. 

Alverca begin their campaign away to current title holders FC Porto on Matchday 1 and follow that up by hosting near neighbours Estrela da Amadora in what feels like a massive game for both sides even just one full week into the new season. 

In the markets

Sporting CP TBC
Draw TBC
FC Alverca TBC