Three straight away games before Christmas, three victories for Sporting, a Christmas season on all fronts, including the quarter-finals of the Portuguese Cup, which it hasn’t reached since 2018/2019 – and won it, in the big ones penalties, against FC Porto.
But there are three games and… three expulsions for the lion, in a strange attraction to the red of a team that, until this stage, had only one red card, shown to Matheus Reis in the 2nd round of the championship, against SC Braga. The sequence began in Penafiel, in the final game of the League Cup group stage, and with the same protagonist of yesterday’s match: Bruno Tabata. It was 73 minutes into that game that, for a double yellow, the 24-year-old Brazilian midfielder was sent off, having served a suspension game against Gil Vicente, in the championship, last Saturday.
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