Sporting CP have had their next league fixture rescheduled to aid with their preparations for the following midweek’s Champions League match against Arsenal.
O Jogo report that Sporting CP have had their next game against Santa Clara brought forward to Friday, April 3rd, giving them an extra day to prepare for their Champions League quarter-final first leg match against Arsenal the following Tuesday.
Arsenal will play on the Saturday against Southampton, and that would originally have been the same days as the Sporting match was planned to take place. But Sporting will now play on the previous day instead.
It’s not all good news for Sporting’s Arsenal preparations, as they’ll now have much less time to prepare for the Santa Clara game following the international break.
The Portuguese national team are playing in the USA on Tuesday, March 31st, which will be the early hours of Wednesday morning back in Europe.
The four Sporting players in the Portugal squad (Rui Silva, Goncalo Inacio, Francisco Trincao, and Pedro Goncalves) will then have just a couple of days to get ready for their league game on the Friday.
Given Sporting are trailing Porto in the title race, they arguably can’t afford to rest their internationals for the league match. So they face a tiring week.
Tickets for the Sporting-Arsenal clash are going on sale to their fans for prices starting at €30 (£26), quite some way short of the minimum £78 Arsenal are charging home fans for the return leg. It’s also significantly less than the £43 Sporting are charging Arsenal fans in the away leg.