Gold-plated victory?
Two wundergoals keep Sporting undefeated, but is there cause for concern?
Sporting fans have reason to be excited. The team has secured all 18 possible points in the Liga and got off to a roaring start in the Champions League. The summer acquisitions have proven their worth and have treated the green-and-white faithful to some terrific performances. But is the brilliance of Sporting’s start masking flaws that could surface during the season?
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Sporting defeated Tondela on Saturday at the Alvalade, 2–0, thanks to two long-distance strikes from Jérémy Mathieu and Bruno Fernandes. Mathieu’s goal brought back grainy memories of André Cruz, the legendary Sporting CB who was a free-kick specialist. Bruno Fernandes showed once again that any time he has the ball at his feet in the final third is a goal-scoring opportunity.
But in between the two highlights there were long stretches of languid football. JJ made two changes to Sporting’s (thus far) customary XI. Gelson Martins was spelled by Iuri Medeiros. Fernandes took the place of Rodrigo Battaglia in midfield, with Alan Ruiz playing the secondary striker. The substitutes failed to seize the opportunities and showed that there is a significant dropoff between this Sporting squad’s first and second tiers. Ruiz proved many skeptics of early last season (including this author) wrong with a very good second half of the season. However, Ruiz appears to have stalled again to begin this season. Against Tondela, Ruiz was largely absent. Medeiros was more involved in the attack and narrowly missed scoring. But he was unable to combine with Piccini on the right flank the way Gelson has, leading to self-imposed isolation. The second-half entrances of Battaglia and Gelson for Ruiz and Iuri resuscitated Sporting and the match ended with a number of scoring chances for Sporting in the final fifteen minutes, beginning with Bruno’s goal.
While Sporting had offensive problems its revised first-line, the defensive grouping of Coentrão-Mathieu-Coates-Piccini was unchanged and solid. But JJ did not include any traditional defenders on the bench beyond little-used CB André Pinto. Given the frailty of Fabio Coentrão, JJ leaving Jonathan Silva out of the squad speaks volumes. Recall that Silva bore much responsibility for the two late goals scored by Olympiacos. Was his exlusion a momentary punishment for that performance or a sign of JJ’s decreased confidence in him? Cristiano Piccini, who has already suffered a minor injury this season, continues to be pushed to the limits, with Stefan Ristovski apparently not yet ready for prime-time.
This week marks Sporting’s debut in the Taça CTT, against Marítimo. Given the second-class status of the competition, one would expect JJ would use the match to give some minutes to some of the fringe members of the squad. It would be another opportunity for those players to provide some reassurance that Sporting could withstand any casualties on its front-line.
