New President of Sporting Club de Portugal + Selecção spam
Godinho Lopes voted new Sporting president in disputed election
Bruno de Carvalho calls for rerun
Amid dramatic, bad-tempered and chaotic scenes - in keeping with the rest of Sporting’s season - Luis Godinho Lopes emerged as the winner of the Lisbon club’s presidential election on Sunday morning. Lopes obtained 36.55% of the vote, just pipping the pre-election favourite to win the ballot, Bruno de Carvalho, whose candidacy obtained 36.15%.
So confident were Bruno de Carvalho’s supporters of victory in the election, especially as sketchy news through Saturday night suggested he was leading in the votes, that when the official result was eventually announced at 6.00am on Sunday morning it was largely only Carvalho’s supporters who were in attendance outside the Alvalade Stadium.
Ugly scenes
There were ugly scenes among the sizeable crowd as confirmation came of Godinho Lopes’ victory, with many of Carvalho’s supporters venting their frustration through physical confrontation directed against the police and the winning candidate’s team. Godinho Lopes himself had to turn back from the stage initially set up for the victory speech as metal barriers and objects were hurled in his direction. The atmosphere only simmered down to something resembling normality upon an appeal from Bruno de Carvalho for calm.
When Godinho Lopes was finally able to deliver his winning speech he moved quickly in an attempt to unite the different factions. “From today onwards I am no longer a candidate and I am now the president. I would like to appeal to all the candidates to join forces so that our club can reach the top where it deserves to be.
“I give my sincere thanks to those who voted for me, but from today I am president of all the members. I want to transmit the message that everybody can count on me to take Sporting to the top. Dear members, you can count on a great team that will be ready to serve this club from Monday. In being elected today, I can say with total confidence that we will manage to reposition Sporting. Viva o Sporting!”
Domingos Paciencia pencilled in as new coach
Lopes made it clear throughout the campaign that he would be targeting Braga coach Domingos Paciencia to manage Sporting next season. He is also said to have reached deals with a number of players to boost the squad for 2011/12, including Braga centre-back Rodriguez and Portugal striker Hugo Almeida.
However, the new incumbent may have to face a more immediate obstacle as his begins his mandate. Just as the dust was starting to settle on an agitated election night, which was preceded by a cantankerous campaign, Bruno de Carvalho has called the authenticity of the vote into question.
He claims a number of irregularities occurred in the election process. Speaking to a plethora of Portuguese TV and radio outlets throughout Sunday, he called on two of the other defeated candidates, Dias Ferreira and Abrantes Mendes to publicly share their opinions and to back him in his attempt to have the election rerun.
Injunction
“The aim is to clarify everything that happened and to spell out the rules that had to be complied with and some of which were not. We are preparing to impugn the elections. We will go ahead with a court injunction,” said Bruno de Carvalho.
Click to view(I don't want to say anything in this as I am an "outsider" when it comes to Sporting's internal problems but I do hope things will be resolved pretty soon)
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Now on for the picspam of training before the Portugal - Chile match, the match itself and the training in preparation vs the Finland friendly. Some of the photos I got from tumblr sources 1 and 2 - so thanks a lot to them.
Training before the Portugal - Chile match:
Andre Santos and Nelson
Training for the amazing race:
"When I order you to sing, you sing, okay?"
Singing My Way:
Carvalho can be seen smiling here but deep inside he's mad that Pepe was the one who was chosen to sing My Way:
Instead of Pepe apologizing to Carvalho, he chose to chat with Fabs:
"Carvalho: Meh, who needs friends like that when you have Quaresma"
Some love for the Chileans:
Match itself:
The lineups were:
Portugal: Patrício; Pereira, Carvalho, Rolando, Coentrão; Meireles, Martins, Moutinho; Nani, Postiga, Varela.
Chile: Bravo; Jara, Contreras, Ponce; Isla, Carmona, Matías, Vidal, Medel; Sanchez, Beausejour
The subs I remember:
Pepe for Carvalho
Sílvio for Pereira
Quaresma for Varela
Machado for Martins
Danny for Nani
Orellana for Isla (Chile)
What I learned during the match is Varela (who's also playing well at Porto) should always be considered to start if one of Nani or Ronaldo are not playing. Not much to tell during the match, (and) except if you want to download it, just download the 1st half, both sides did really well. Nani and Varela their defense as was Alexis Sanchez to us. And for Chile, I thought Medel was getting in the way of Carmona at times because they had the same role. Our defenders were the solid ones in the team for the whole match especially when Pereira was still playing, just too bad he dislocated his arm and had to be stretchered off, I hope he'll be fine very soon. And talk about, some fans who wanted Patricio to be the goalie ahead of Eduardo and just because he didn't save Matias Fernandez goal they are now saying he's not our future goalie? Give him a chance, he might have been slow to react to that one but it was a good strike by Matigol too. And please Carlos Martins, please improve your corners and free kicks :p.
What else, Meireles was the captain for the 2nd half (just thought some of the Liverpool fans should know) and good news: Norway and Denmark played out a 1-1 draw, meaning that we can get the first place in Group H and automatic qualification to Euro 2012!
I don't really have time to describe what happened exactly, so just enjoy the photos.
National anthem
Modeling a box of chocolates? :P
Telling Silvio how proud he was at that modeling moment:
Varela's goal:
Everyone were happy for him of course but take a look at Meireles hehe:
So proud of his former teammate at Porto
Roleplaying as chickens, these two hehe:
Just unfortunate it had to end this way for Pereira:
And it just had to be Matias Fernandez/Matigoal who scores vs his teammates at Sporting, wasn't it?
Roro why are you so angry?
I really liked this matchup, Sanchez and Fabs:
Future players at Man United or Inter: *hides* I can dream okay? (I don't want them to leave their clubs though)
Danny's bored so he's just putting water on his hair:
New training photos, in preparation vs Finland:
Whew, finally.. I hope you don't mind the number of photos ;)
Wishlist for the Finland friendly later: Ventura gets to play at least in the 2nd half, for Bento to try using Andre Santos with Moutinho and Meireles
Random but Porto fans... Falcao and Guarin scored for Colombia vs Ecuador last week ;)