Sporting says that the towels hanging from Rui Silva’s goal were removed three times. FC Porto says it knows nothing about the situation and guarantees that it will investigate the case. In the same game, after the home team’s goal, all the balls began to be removed from the pins by the ball catchers.
After the whole world was scandalized by what happened in the CAN final, with ball catchers taking the goalkeeper’s towels to clean their gloves because of the rain, Sporting says that exactly the same thing happened at Estádio do Dragão, this Monday, against FC Porto.
According to the Alvalade club, the towels hanging from Rui Silva’s goal were removed three times. FC Porto says it knows nothing about the situation and guarantees that it will investigate the case.
In the same game, after the home team’s goal, all the balls began to be removed from the pins by the ball catchers. The ‘dragons’ say that this is a practice that takes place in several stadiums, but Sporting and Benfica, contacted by SIC, claim that in Alvalade and Luz this never happens.
Liga Portugal states that the balls must be in the pegs from the first to the last minute of the game.
Fireworks and newspaper covers
In the early hours before the game, near the hotel where the Sporting team stayed, fireworks were launched at 1:30 am and 4 am.
The ‘lions’, when they arrived at the Dragão locker room, found a very high temperature. A source from the club tells SIC that it looked like a sauna. They asked FC Porto to lower the temperature, but the host team said it was not possible.
Contacted by SIC, FC Porto says that the temperature was the same on the entire locker room floor.
Sporting was also surprised to find, within the same locker room, the walls decorated with newspaper covers featuring ‘dragons’ titles, including in the urinals and inside the bathroom.
FC Porto says it has had its locker room decorated this way since September, due to visits to the stadium. There is a video of a fan who paid a visit and proves what the blue and white club says.
