I decided to open up a new thread for discussion of the Sporting matches in English...

Watched your home game on RTP last night. Was a horrible match!
What went wrong?

When i visited you guys last summer things seemed to be a lot better!

Well, most of our squad is pure trash, players have no motivation and many of them are in a terrible physical shape, the coach has a " small team mentality ", the president is a joke, the pitch looks like a farming field..... There are so many things going wrong right now that everybody is really sad and wishing this season finishes soon. Our only hopes this season are to win a domestic cup and reach an advanced stage at Europa League but even that seems hard at this moment....

Wow, well your field isn't that bad, I think... I saw already some more horrible ones in Swiss football...
And why are your players so trashy?! I can't explain that for myself... In Switzerland would every club dream about an offensive with Liedson, Helder Postiga, Caicedo and Djalo... Why can't they reach their full potencial?

That´s the big question for ourselves too, nobody knows why these players don´t show their full potencial. We don´t have a strong and balanced squad to become champions but it´s good enough to finish 3rd. But in order to finish in these spots its necessary to win games and even against small teams our players don´t know what to do inside the pitch. 

What we need is Costanzo  

Now seriously, it all started with the board elections past summer.
Bettencourt won and from that point on everything colapsed, we had a serious problem of lack of new signings, the 3 players that came, came late and have poor quality, exept 1 of them. The pre-season was a disaster but our new president prefered to stick his head in the sand and did nothing about it.
Then came the season and it was bad game after bad game a still the president thought everything was ok, no reasons to change, until we were like 13 points behind the league leader and the presssure was so high the coach resing his position, still the president would do nothing but Paulo Bento (the former coach) still has some good sense.  
Now we have a new coach (Carvalhal) but we have serious problems of lack of quality players in our squad.
This season is over before christmas for us.
If we had a president and a real board we could build on this to prepare the next season but we have no money and most of all we don't have a director good enough to make good signings with the available budget, so we can expect more of the same, some more ridiculous bad signings and more losses like yesterday's.
I really think we are going for a record this year, " The year when we had the worst result in the league"  this will be a good record to associate with our 1st remunerated President " Bettencourt". Yes, we are buried in debts but we can pay the president 400.000 € a year for him to do nothing.

Well, I'm not a specialist in Sporting questions... but it's a lot about the coach. After our champions title in 2000 we had in St. Gallen always very expensive squads... but no success. Never! Players and coaches came and gone away again... and we got relegated in 2008! Then our actual coach Uli Forte came and built up a new squad with less money... but they performed stronger than the years before, got promoted and played a lot good matches in 1. Division again. Now we are short in front a big success in Swiss Cup...

I agree with you.

In the last half-decade Sporting have progressively filled the managing positions with people commonly known as "yes-man" that have absolutely no knowledge of football whatsoever just because they wouldn't question the directors board decisions. The coaches themselves were chosen based on this idea, the more shallow in personality and/or less demanding the better.

They thought this would be a nice way to control their status-quo and as what concerns football itself things would eventually be ok and Sporting would win a few championships now and then, maybe not that often, but then again it was life, why should they care?

The current coach has never coached a big club (one of those that are always on the line to become champion) and even in mid-average clubs his success was below modest. That's not a good sign and as it stands right now we would need a really good shake from a really good coach no matter what we had to pay him to get things on the right track again.

Outch! Not really good requirements to be successfull...

But for us its nearly impossible to change things. FC St. Gallen is all the same... we have an elitist "mafia" that leads the club. After our relegation our president and his friends from the management board left the executive of our club. But they were elected in the Betriebs AG (the company behind our club, that is responsible for our stadium, marketing/pr, events, etc)! So they didn't lose anything of their power and installed some of their friends on their former positions...

The only good thing in the last 10 years is, that they have decided for Uli Forte as our new coach last year! I really love that guy! He's so young and did on every station in his career some big progress. He bought up a new successfull squad with character, a strong collective and a lot of fighting spirit. But with as things are now I am affraid of the future. Because when in 2 or 3 years will have left our club, things will go wrong again...

But I see some similarity between Sporting and St. Gallen in this case. I visited you guys in May, when oneosix and his friends were doing everything for winning the club elections... We were at the same point 2 or 3 years ago... We fans tried also to bring some of our people into the clubs management. But we failed... because some people have just too mutch money (shares)...

Well, what I usually say is that it doesn't really matter if you don't fancy your club leaders as long as they put the club on the right track (being lucky or not). The signing of Uli Forte and the great campaign of St Gallen this year is a good sign for the club, it means that there is sufficient "know-how" for St Gallen to achieve its objectives. Of course, one would like that everything is perfect and everybody in the club is extremely competent but if things do work then that is the least of your problems.

When it comes to Sporting, our main goal is the championship. If we aren't champions we should be sad (not a little bit happy) and try to find out what went wrong instead of relaxing and say "mission accomplished". This is a mistake and the same goes for St Gallen - never stop being ambitious, never stop questioning and being demanding when objectives are not fullfilled.

Wuuuah, ugly match today against Hertha...

I zapped away after 20mins... and came back for the second half... but... uhh stupid goal...

Um verdadeiro sportinguista

Não foi com o ST.Gallen que o Soares Franco assinou um protocolo qualquer?

Eu também já fiz o mesmo esta época...mas só por uns segundos...mas de jogo para jogo o tempo de zapp aumenta...

 

Naval 1° de Maio       -      Sporting CP       0:1 

Congrats! 4th for at least one night...
Im ready for an Europa League fight between Sporting and FC St. Gallen next season... hehe 

I hope so   

For the least, it seems that your club won't be relegated this year... and neither ours.

Yes, thats right. But we have good chances in the cup tournament. We reached half finals and play at home against Lausanne (2. Div)... the other match is Kriens (2. Div) - Basel. If the final is St. Gallen - Basel we are nearly qualificated for Europa League, because Basel will participate on the quali for Champions League... 

Feliz Natal!

From St. Gallen, Switzerland!

Thank you... best wishes to all for 2010!

I had a great time after christmas with a cool pretty cool trip to the UK, where I watched 3 Premier League matches... Had ticks for West Ham - Portsmouth (@ Upton Park), Tottenham Hotspur - West Ham (@ White Hart Lane) and Portsmouth - Arsenal (@Fratton Park)...was great! They probably all play better football than Sporting and St. Galler; but I wouldn't miss our clubs!

And I was a little busy because I had my birthday yesterday (on new years day  )...
But let me tell you guys: I wish you all the best, much of green white pleasure and that all your wishes become true..
Have a nice time!

FCSG