Without ever having had an advantage and having only managed a 1-1 draw, Sporting had a night to forget in the 28-39 defeat in Alvalade (11-23 at half-time) against French side Nantes in a match counting for the 4th round of Group A of the Champions League.
A result that caused the lions’ second defeat after, in the previous round, they had left Denmark beaten by Aalborg 35-30.
The day before, in anticipation of the match, Ricardo Costa warned that it was important not to concede 32 or 33 against an opponent who he considers to be one of the best in the world at defending, as «if we suffer more than that we will hardly be able to win».
What the coach of the two-time national champions didn’t count on was a dark night for his team, which started badly and somewhat apathetically, especially in the defensive recovery, and reached half-time already trailing by 12 (11-23).
Technical errors paid dearly and when the French runners-up reached 3-10, they had already taken advantage of two 3-0 partials (1-4, 3-10), with three goals scored on the counterattack. But it was a 0-5 partial in which the green and whites went 4.39m without scoring, which began to make recovery practically impossible.
When going to the locker room, Nantes had an attacking efficiency of 74%, achieving 23 points in 29 attacks. Many resulted from the Lions’ 8 technical errors, which had a 28% completion rate.
As incredible as it may seem, or perhaps not given the performance of both teams, Sporting never managed to score two unanswered goals in the first half. To make matters worse, he had wasted all the chances of a 7m free kick. The Gauls did not miss the two they had available.
The 2nd half didn’t start in the best way, as the home team once again allowed a partial score of 0-3 (11-26) which resulted in the biggest disadvantage on the scoreboard. But, it was also the moment when the team from the capital managed to react and start to play almost on equal terms against an opponent who, last season, had beaten them twice in the quarter-final fight for passage to the Final Four of the Champions League (27-28, 30-32).
Salvador Salvador (4) and Mamadou Gassama (2) scored the team’s first two goals in a row and Nantes began to experience difficulties that they had not known before and that is why the coach was asked for a time out.
The passing lines and submissions began to appear, the errors that had allowed the opponent to score so many times in transition diminished and with Martim Costa, undoubtedly the most effective of Alvalade’s players, scoring five of his ten goals in a 8-3 (23-32) run, Sporting reduced the difference to below ten for the first time since 9-18.
With 15m still to run on the clock, even on a bad day, hope grew in the team and spread to the stands, but, after three wasted shots, Nantes, including Ayoub Abdi (11), Noam Leopold (7), Théo Demonuge (5) and Ian Tarrafeta (4), killed the lion’s ambition with a 0-3 partial. (24-37) in which he took advantage of another 7m free kick (4/4) and the hosts wasted another (4/0).
