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Ronaldo in the clouds too: Sporting Lisbon's incredible and illogical championship

She has not won a title since 2002 and was not supposed to get close to the top, but the young coach Ruben Amor, Ronaldo's age, was signed for a huge sum and caused a real miracle.

The title has been promised, and now the Lions want to end a season without a loss - and also bring back the lost son Cristiano

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• sporting Lisbon

• Cristiano Ronaldo

Michael Yochin

Friday, May 14, 2021, 12:00 p.m.

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Summary: Sporting Lisbon beat Boavista 0-1 and win the Portuguese Championship (Sport 1)

When Sporting Lisbon won its previous championship in the 2001/02 season, coach Laszlo Bologna considered promoting Cristiano Ronaldo, a 17-year-old boy who flourished in academia but did not - his debut took place just months later. At that time, a boy named Ruben Amor, an adult from Cristiano, studied at the Benfica Academy for exactly nine days. He was not considered a prodigy, and the Eagles released him this summer for the modest Blanchash, but he was supposed to be a determined guy - he proved himself, shone in the youth teams, made his way back to Benfica, and was even included alongside Ronaldo in the Portugal squad for two World Cups, 2010 and 2014 .

In the summer of 2020, Sporting fans were stunned when the club decided to invest a significant percentage of the amount received from Manchester United in exchange for Bruno Fernandez to sign most of them as coaches.

After all, he had started his serious career on the lines only half a year earlier, in Braga's reserve.

And while he was soon promoted to the top squad when Ricardo Se Pinto was sacked, and even won the League Cup, he still speaks of only a 35-year-old professional, lacking basic experience.

Worse - he was clearly identified with Benfica, and never hid his love for the red side of Lisbon.

Activate his release clause which stood at 10 million euros - the third highest amount in history paid for a coach?

It sounds like a hallucinatory idea on the verge of insanity.

More on Walla!

For the first time in 19 years: Sporting Lisbon won the Portuguese championship

To the full article

The generator of the miracle.

Most are said (Photo: Reuters)

A history of losers and scandals

To be honest, the cells for sporting do more nonsense. The sequence of failures of the Lions from Lisbon is so long that many journalists have long recommended abolishing the definition of the "Big Three" in Portugal. There were only two majors, Benfica and Porto, who have shared in the last 18 championships. Sporting, on the other hand, was the ultimate loser. It has generally failed in the transfer market, replacing coaches like socks - in the last decade the count stands at 16. Even when management managed to make the biggest headlines and bring in Georges Jesus straight from Benfica in 2015, it also did not work. The acclaimed professional failed at the Lions, and the end of his tenure was particularly dismal. In March 2018, dozens of violent ultras broke into the team's training facility, attacked the players and coaches and beat them with batons.

Most of the players decided to leave after the shocking attack, but some changed their minds following the departure of the scandalous president Bruno de Carvalho.

Bruno Fernandez also remained, signed a new contract, and was a key and critical figure for the club.

When the Lions had to sell it, it felt like the end.

They had almost nothing left, and they were supposed to disappear within mediocrity.

Sporting finished last season in fourth place, 22 points away from champions Porto, and no one - really no one, this is not an exaggeration at all - was willing to put a worn penny on it in 2020/21.

More on Walla!

Will close a circle after 18 years?

"Cristiano Ronaldo to sign for Sporting Lisbon"

To the full article

Who gambled on them before?

Bruno Fernandez in Sporting uniform (Photo: Reuters)

Sold the stars, stayed with the academy

It was supposed to be the usual battle between the two. Porto was the proven champion and winner with excellent coach Sergio Conceição. Benfica "brought home" Georges Jesus, who had just won the Brazilian Championship and the Libertadores Cup with Flamengo, and spent about 100 million euros on a prestigious acquisition that was supposed to greatly upgrade the staff. And sporting? After parting ways with Fernandez, she also sold Argentine Marcus Aconia to Sevilla and Brazilian Wendel to Zenit. No known player was added, and in the Europa League qualifiers the home defeat was recorded 4: 1 against the Austrian Lasek Linz. If anyone had said then, in early October, that the Lions would take a championship in the best season in their history without a loss, they would have taken care of hospitalizing him. This scenario was absurd. In fact, he still feels out of place. However, it did occur in reality.

It turned out that the investment in the aforesaid was the most profitable and wise that Sporting has ever made.

When he arrived a year and two months ago, the young coach started working very thoroughly to build the team as he saw fit according to budget constraints.

He knew full well that last season's remnants were lost anyway, and took advantage of them to move on to his favorite 3-4-3 formation, examining the players there, including the youngsters from the academy who had not been given a chance until then.

Recent cycles have become a kind of test.

Those who did not meet the requirements were left out, but those who remained - and the few who were signed to the boss' explicit requests - well understood their role in a tactic that did not change at all, in any game and under any conditions.

Not the classic battle.

Georges Jesus (Photo: GettyImages)

Earn 20 points in the last minutes

There are coaches who like flexibility, and there are players who enjoy flexibility, but with Amor the business is really fixed - and its players benefit from it. He found for everyone exactly the slot in which he could excel. Take, for example, Uruguayan captain Sebastian Coates, who about a decade ago was considered a world-class promise but failed at Liverpool and was eulogized. Coates have quite a few drawbacks - he is slow, tends to lose confidence and makes mistakes under pressure. That's why he has scored his own goals, red cards and penalties. But it also has a lot of advantages - leadership ability, head game, game vision, fantastic positioning, delivery ability. Putting him as a leading player in a pair of brakes, it can sometimes end badly, but when he functions as a kind of libro in a brake trio, with two key ties to keep him, the 30-year-old Coates looks like one of the best in the world.

Sporting's iron defense has conceded 15 goals in 32 league games, and Coates has also scored five goals himself - all critical, including a late double that turned Jill Vicente into a 1-2 win in February.

In general, the team that was used to falling apart and absorbing in the moment of truth, this season has become a certified winner who scratched good results with her nails even when she played badly.

The Lions took 20 points thanks to goals scored after the 80th minute - and it started already in October, in the third round, with a dramatic equalizer by Luciano Vito that brought 2: 2 against Porto.

Vito, by the way, was sold immediately afterwards to Saudi al-Hilal, because he too did not really fit the Amorim system.

He only continued with the guys he trusted with his eyes closed.

Thanks to this belief, they went from unknown to stellar.

They did not believe either.

Sporting players celebrate (Photo: AP, Pedro Rocha)

Even a 2005 native partner

Joao Palinia, who was loaned to Braga in the previous two years and also knew Amorim there, became a banker as a formidable back-up midfielder, and reached the national team. Alongside him excelled Joao Mario, an academy graduate and former national team star who lost his way after moving to Inter - and returned home on loan to be a partner in the celebration. The 22-year-old Pedro Gonzalez, who did not find his way into the Portuguese colony of Wolves and spent last season in the little Pamlicao uniform, arrived in the summer, was converted from a playmaker to a striker, and became the king of league goals with 18 conquests. Antonio Adan, once the unwanted goalkeeper of Real Madrid, arrived after two years on the bench of Atletico and provided a great season.

The share of young academy graduates was very central.

Nono Mendes, who was born in June 2002, that is, weeks after the previous win, was so amazing along the left wing, that he is now a candidate to open in Portugal uniform at the European Championships.

19-year-old Gonzalo Insio has discovered sparks of a top-flight stopper capable of playing alongside Ruben Diaz in the national uniform.

And in March, in a game against Giramash, the goat is set to make a debut for Dario Asugo, born in 2005, just five days after his 16th birthday - and he became the youngest player in the history of the Portuguese league.

"It's a sign to all the boys that they can get a chance at this club. When kids are thinking about which academy to join, they need to take that into account," the coach stated at the time.

Because he really does not think only about the short term.

He sees the broad interests of Sporting.

Another discovery of the season.

Nono Mendes (Photo: AP, Pedro Rocha)

It remains only not to lose in the derby

No wonder now the fans are ready to kiss the ground on which they are stepping.

The coach, who radiates passion during the games and as a result suffers distances and suspensions, has become the face of Sporting.

He ran the campaign perfectly not only on the pitch but also psychologically.

Throughout the first few months, when the team led the table contrary to early predictions, he was careful to state that the Lions are not thinking of a championship.

He did not let the media stress his staff, preferring to absorb the fire alone when necessary, and navigating the ship to an unprecedented achievement.

Sporting did not always shine, but always took points.

With 25 wins and seven draws after 32 rounds, she secured the coveted title on Tuesday two weeks before the end of the season - and the celebrations were huge.

She may now end the season without a loss, if she does not succumb on Saturday in a derby at Benfica Stadium.

The Eagles themselves took a lossless championship in 1973, the Porto Dragons did so in 2011, and now the Lions want to join the list - only in a much less predictable way.

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A post shared by Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano)

And yes, Ronaldo is celebrating too.

He, too, no longer believed he would get to see his beloved team at the summit, but now there is even talk of a possible return.

It can be an exciting closing circle, and who knows - maybe he will play under the guidance of a coach older than him in just nine days.

And if you look at the way Sporting has done in the last year, Cristiano also has something to learn from most of what is said.

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