- Sporting v Arsenal – recent games, where the clubs stand and what the stadium is like
- Sporting Clube Portugal v Arsenal: how the clubs have been doing
By Tony Attwood
Arsenal and Sporting have played each other seven times. Arsenal have won three of the matches, three have been drawn, and Sporting have won once. That defeat for Arsenal was on 16 March 2023 when the game went to penalties, and Gabriel Martinelli had his penalty saved.
None of the games has been in the Champions League, however two were in the Fairs Cup and four in the Europa League, so this forthcoming game is a bit of a first.
One of the most notable things about Sporting is the way that their goal scoring capacity has built up during this campaign.
Looking at their results in March they beat Porto 1-0, beat Famalicao by the same score, beat Moreirense 0-3, beat Estoril 3-0, beat FC Porti 1-0, drew 2-2 with Braga, beat Bodo/Glimt 3-0 and 5-0, beat Alverca 1-4 away, and beat Santa Clar 4-2 at home.
Now that is a very good run of results by any standard, but the problem for Sporting is that these results are, by and large, against teams they would generally expect to beat. This is because the Portuguese league itself is particularly unbalanced, with three big clubs dominating everything, and then the rest watching from afar.
Thus although the 1-0 victory over Porto on 3 March was undoubtedly a highly contested match, that was the exception.
The gap between Arsenal and Aston Villa, the fourth club in the Premier League, is currently 16 points after 31 games, which means Arsenal have gained more points than Villa at a rate of around 0.52 points a game.
However the gap between Poro and Sporting Braga in fourth place in the Portuguese League is 24 points after 27 games, which means that Sporting are increasing the gap between themselves and Braga by 0.89 points a game. And the point of that is that it shows how much weaker the competition is between the first and fourth-placed teams in the two leagues.
In short, as ever, the big three clubs in Portugal are running away at the top of the league, while the rest of the league is being left farr, far behind.
Now this may seem like fun for the top clubs in the league, and this is not uncommon in European leagues. Sometimes it is just one or two teams always winning, sometimes three, but the variation that we have traditionally seen in the Premier League (asside from when Manchester City were able to buy everyone and anyone they wanted, and through their other Euroepan clubs make it ever harder for other Premier League clubs to get who they wanted) has not been known in Portugal.
In fact only once in the last 12 campaigns has any of the top three places in the league been occupied by a club other than Benfica, Sporting and Porto. That was when Paços de Ferreira came third, 23 points behind Benfica in second.
Thus it is that some of the leagues in which contain clubs that Arsenal play in European matches are nothing like the Premier League. For in these leagues, clubs have been allowed to gain a total dominance, thus effectively ending most other teams chances of ever winning the league title.
As a result, for example, Benfica has won the league 38 times, Porto has won the league 30 times, and Sporting 21 times. Otherwise, Belenenses has won it once, and Boavista likewise has won it once. Put another way, there have been 60 winners from Lisbon and 31 winners from Porto, and no team from any other city or town has won the league during the 91 seasons in its current form. It’s a very different concept from the Premier League, and one of course, it is exactly the model that ManC wanted to impose on the rest of the Premier League, with them as the local edition of Porto.
So as we look forward to our next European game, we find we are playing a club from a league that has a very different approach and history from England’s Premier League.
Perhaps as a result of this lack of competitiveness, the very best players who come through the Portuguese league then tend to move on elsewhere. In the case of Sporting Lisbon the most famous names are Cristiano Ronaldo (who moved on to Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus), Luis Figo (who went on to play for Barcelona, Real Madrid and Inter Milan) and Nani, who after Mancheser United and Sporting, went on a tour taking in Fenerbahçe, Valencia, Lazio, Orlando City, Venezia, Melbourne Victory, Adana Demirspor, Estrela Amadora, and FC Aktobe.
But to come back to our main issue, the current condition of the Portuguese League, Sporting are second, five points behind Porto, and three points ahead of Benfica. Their main issue is to fight for the Portuguese title, rather than harbouring any thoughts of winning the Champions League. But that doesn’t mean they won’t make an effort.
