Primeira Liga preview: Sporting Lisbon hoping Euro 2016 triumph translates to title

Ian Hawkey previews Sporting's fortunes ahead of the new Portuguese Primeira Liga season, as the resurgent club hopes it can ride a wave of Euro 2016 glory to a return to the top.

Sporting's Joao Mario. Francisco Leong / AFP
Powered by automated translation

One by one, they have been counted back in, a quartet of history-makers employed at the club with perhaps the strongest claim of any to be Europe’s leading nursery of champions.

As the Sporting players who contributed so handsomely to Portugal’s victory at the European Championship in France just over a month ago filed back to their day jobs, in preparation for a league campaign that begins at home to Maritimo on Saturday, their head coach Jorge Jesus wondered anxiously how many of them will still be his come the start of next month.

You only need enter the entrance hall at Sporting Clube de Portugal's training headquarters at Alcohete, across the Tagus estuary from Lisbon's city centre to recognise this site as quite the talent-hothouse. Photographed on the walls in their green-and-white hoops are a young Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Figo, who share the distinction of both having both won the Ballon D'Or, the Fifa World Player of the Year award during this century.

More football

• Barcelona, Rangers, Ahmed Musa and Arsenal v Liverpool: The big weekend preview

• Sherko Kareem: Iraq's future Cristiano Ronaldo who can make your heart beat faster

Ronaldo, by virtue of captaining Portugal to their first Euros title and helping Real Madrid to their 11th European Cup this year, is firm favourite to add that accolade again to his honours for 2016.

Through the Hall of Fame of Sporting's academy you find plenty of dazzling dribblers, like Ronaldo and Figo, who went on from Sporting to play for Barcelona in the 1990s, then Madrid and Inter Milan.

There is Ricardo Quaresma, much travelled and once of the Al Ahli in the Arabian Gulf League.

There is Nani, who has just joined Valencia. Those two ex-sportinguistas, who had their ups and downs, last month achieved career highs, cleverly used by Portugal's coach Fernando Santos in the national team's annexing of the European Championship.

In all, 10 of the 14 men who took the field during the 120 minutes of Portugal’s 1-0 win in the final against France in the final had passed through Sporting’s academy.

There were defenders, like Jose Fonte and Cedric Soares, both now at Southampton, relative veterans like Ronaldo – who left the field injured early in the final – and midfielder Joao Moutinho; and there were those who still wear hoops, who Jesus hopes will bring the confidence of gold-medallists to bear on Sporting over the next 10 months.

Rui Patricio, the goalkeeper who enhanced his reputation, particularly during the last match of Euro 2016, is Sporting’s goalkeeper; Joao Mario, the 23-year-old midfielder is a busy, incisive advertisement for the best virtues of an Alcochete education; Adrien Silva, 27 and blessed with some of the adhesive dribbling ability that has taken fellow Sporting students far, has been attached to the club since he was 13; and there’s William Carvalho, the anchor midfielder, 24, who, like Joao Mario, is much admired and coveted by major clubs in leagues abroad.

Jesus is wary that, until the close of the summer transfer window, he cannot be certain that an offer will not come in that Sporting’s board find irresistible for one or two of his Portugal stars, or indeed for striker Islam Slimani, the Algerian who has indicated his desire to spread his wings.

Part of the coach’s work is to convince the squad that having finished just two points shy of top place in last season’s Primeira Liga, won by Benfica on the last day of the season, they can push on.

Jesus, who moved, controversially, to the green side of the city from rivals Benfica 13 months ago, has certainly upgraded Sporting after a long period of slumber.

They won the last of their 18 national championships in 2002, and the 14 years since had mostly been spent watching Benfica and Porto dominate.

“What we now have in Portugal,” says Jesus, “is a proper three-way title-race.” Last term, Porto were the stragglers, fully 13 points behind a resurgent Sporting.

Benfica, who kick off their defence of the title Saturday night at Tondela, are €60 million (Dh245.7m) richer thanks to the sales of Renato Sanches, to Bayern Munich, and Nicolas Gaitan, to Atletico Madrid.

But that pair will take some replacing, Sporting hope they leave a significant gap in Benfica’s armour, open up the opportunity to alter Lisbon’s hierarchy, just as the national team changed Europe’s.

sports@thenational.ae

Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE

Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport