The first week of April is shaping up to be a week of the domestic season in Portugal, as Lisbon giants Benfica and Sporting will meet twice in five days.
On Tuesday, April 2, a position in the Portuguese Cup final will be played in the second leg of the semifinal at Estádio da Luz. Sporting wins 2-1 in the first leg.
Then, on Saturday, April 6, the Estádio José Alvalade will potentially be the scene of the 2023/24 Portuguese League final, when Sporting host their rivals on the other side.
You can have a lot of information about the development of the matches on this website, and PortuGOAL. net will give you a detailed account of this long-awaited double header.
They are two big games in which the stakes are high, but that is how it has been for a century in what is known as the “eternal derby” in the Portuguese football calendar. Regardless of the ups and downs each club may experience, the fierce nature of the rivalry means that when the two groups face off, the city comes to a standstill for 90 minutes as both groups of players desperately seek to get the result that will give their supporters victory. The right to brag locally.
Getting football predictions right is an incredibly tricky task, at times, given the unpredictable nature of the sport, and the history between the two groups shows that this is largely the case with the Lisbon derby. 320 times since the first assembly in 1907, with Benfica winning 139 games (43%), Sporting 113 (35%) and 68 draws.
The Eagles enjoyed a significant first half of dominance, winning 15 of the first 21 meetings between the teams, and Sporting tasted the sweet taste of victory three times in that period.
However, any promotion reflected the strength of the groups at any given time, with Sporting gaining the upper hand over their neighbours at their peak in the 1940s and 1950s, winning 18 games and squandering just 6 between 1945 and 1954.
The Lions’ good fortune for much of this golden era is due to prolific striker Fernando Peyroteo, who remains the most level-headed goalscorer in the game with a staggering 48 goals in forty-five games between Sporting and Benfica.
Their greatest moment of glory came on April 25, 1948, when Sporting had to beat Benfica by three goals to become national champions. Despite the fever on the eve of the match, Peyroteo played and scored four goals in the 4-1 win for the Green and Whites. to win the championship.
There is no praise to guess the most sensible goalscoring moment of the match, which is none other than Eusébio, the greatest Portuguese footballer in history until the emergence of Cristiano Ronaldo at the beginning of this century.
Like Peyroteo, the “Black Panther” also scored at a pace, almost a goal befitting the Lisbon derby match. He scored 27 goals in 29 games between the two teams.
Eusébio fuelled Benfica’s glory years in the 1960s, when the Eagles won back-to-back European Cups and reached the top flight five times in the decade. The Mozambican player has played practically his entire career at Benfica, after leaving the Portuguese capital in 1975. And this golden era of the Reds is also reflected in the statistics of the Lisbon derby.
From 1963 to 1974, Benfica won 16 of the 29 derbies, and the Lions won six times in that run.
In recent decades, the triumphant team has been much more balanced, with FC Porto being the dominant force in Portuguese football for much of this period.
However, even considering the intense rivalry between north and south every time Porto takes on one of Lisbon’s clubs, it has not diminished the intensity of the fans shown every time the Eagles take on the Lions.
This attack divides friends and families in the city, but there are few signs of brotherhood in the face of the fites. A culture that accompanies all those affected is the march of distant enthusiasts into “enemy territory”, accompanied by a police escort, covering the distance. It is about 3 kilometres long that separates the two stadiums.
The contrasting colours, chants, history and importance of the match in determining who will end the season with the trophies ensure that the Lisbon match will be one of football’s premier local derbies, alongside other intense rivalries in major football cities such as Milan, Liverpool and Buenos Aires.
Portuguese football enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting the next installment, just two weeks from now, when crowds of more than 65,000 people and 50,000 frenzied supporters will fill the Estádio da Luz and Estádio José Alvalade for matches that will once again welcome the other players from the Portuguese capital and beyond under the influence.
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