Sporting really did run less than Bodø/Glimt: Check out the stats | OneFootball

Sporting’s 3-0 defeat against Bodø/Glimt in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 has made the tie very difficult for the Lions and exposed a clear problem: the lack of physical freshness in the Sporting squad.

At the end of the match, coach Rui Borges admitted that the team struggled in this regard. “There was a real lack of energy among many players,” he acknowledged. UEFA’s statistics help explain this feeling. In total, Sporting players covered 119.3 kilometers, a significant figure, but clearly lower than the 129.5 kilometers recorded by the Norwegians—a difference of 10.2 kilometers, practically the average distance a player covers in a game.

Interestingly, the player who ran the most on the pitch was Iván Fresneda, with 13.22 km. However, the next five positions in this ranking all belong to Bodø/Glimt athletes: Håkon Evjen (12.69 km), Patrick Berg (12.53 km), Fredrik Bjørkan (12.46 km), Fredrik Sjøvold (12.1 km), and Jens Petter Hauge (11.98 km).

The result also had another significant impact: it ended Sporting’s streak of 40 consecutive games scoring in all competitions. This season, the Lions had only failed to score against Benfica, in the Super Cup.

To advance, Sporting will have to win by three goals at Alvalade to take the tie to extra time—or by four to qualify directly: the Lions have conceded 20 goals and scored only one in these matches (not counting last season’s play-off against Borussia Dortmund).

Bodø/Glimt themselves also rarely suffer heavy defeats. The last time they lost by four goals was in 2022, against Roma then coached by José Mourinho, who won 4-0 in the second leg of the Europa League quarter-finals, with a hat-trick from Nicolò Zaniolo and a goal from Tammy Abraham.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.