Sporting Lisbon take on the visitors Borussia Dortmund in the first leg of UEFA Champions League round of 16. The match will be played on Tuesday, February 11th at Estádio José Alvalade (Lisbon).
Sporting Lisbon played under the leadership of Ruben Amorim until the fall. Yes, there was a frankly unsuccessful 2022/2023 season, with a drop to 4th place. But then, inspired by the trust of the management, they won the championship race against neighboring Sporting in the Primeira Liga. And in the new cycle, although they lost the Super Cup, the Green-Whites started well... And then Manchester United simply bought a young coach. And after that, the Lisbon club experienced a decline, moreover, they have already changed coaches twice. Even Rui Borges has already managed to lose, on penalties, the League Cup final. And there were misfires in the Primeira Liga, but they still managed to consolidate their leadership again. The same is true in the Champions League: after 10 points in 4 rounds, including 4-1 with Manchester City, there were 3 defeats in a row. Including in January, they lost to RB Leipzig, who had no points before! And only in the last round, at least with Bologna, they ended with a 1-1 draw.
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Borussia (Dortmund) is trying to improve the situation after a coaching reshuffle. The Bumblebees were the finalists of the last Champions League. But even then there was a decline in Bundesliga 1: they lost the fight for a place in the quartet of leaders to RB Leipzig, limiting themselves to 5th place in the final. As a result, no one was surprised by the departure of Terzic and a fairly noticeable renewal of the squad in the summer. But Nuri Sahin, who became the head coach, completely failed. At first, the “yellow-blacks” scored few points on the road, and in the winter they began to lose almost all the time. At the same time, the Germans looked good in the Champions League: they lost to the Spanish giants, Real Madrid and Barcelona (and scored twice against each), but won the rest of the matches - against Brugge, Celtic, Sturm and Dinamo Zagreb. But in January, having opened the scoring, they weakly lost to Bologna there too. As a result, the young coach was fired even before returning from Italy. And this immediately helped: they won against Shakhtar Donetsk in the end. And right after that, Niko Kovac was announced as the coach - and he immediately won in his debut match.
The first 3 matches, in 2016 and 2021, were won by the Germans. But the last meeting was won by the "lions". The Portuguese will play at home and are considered the favorites. But both they and the guests play spectacularly — we expect “total over 2.5 goals.”
Prediction for the match: Over 2.5 scored goals.
