FC Porto and Sporting kick off the season battling for the Super Cup | OneFootball

Miguel Queiroz, FC Porto captain, and João Fernandes, Sporting winger, previewed the derby that officially opens the 2026/27 basketball season. National champions and Portuguese Cup winners will contest the Mário Saldanha Super Cup this Saturday at 4:00 p.m. in Albufeira, after two pre-season clashes. This time, however, the stakes are different, and the Sporting player made it clear: “a trophy is always a trophy.”

FC Porto and Sporting go into the first official meeting of the season already familiar with each other: the Dragons won 84-80 in the semi-finals of the Viana do Castelo International Tournament and 88-77 in the final of the Luanda International Tournament. Even so, Miguel Queiroz and João Fernandes share the same central message in their preview: preparation results are left behind when a title is on the line.

From Porto’s side, Miguel Queiroz refused to draw definitive conclusions from the two previous wins. For the captain, pre-season is mainly for building the team, while the Super Cup raises the level of difficulty.

“The results say very little because they are preparation games and teams are often at different stages of pre-season. Pre-season games are always relative, because we are essentially trying to grow as a team and fine-tune the details,” he said. “These games are different and carry an even higher degree of difficulty.”

The reading is a cautious one: FC Porto come in with two wins over their rivals, but they are not treating them as any kind of guarantee for Albufeira. The change in context, from a warm-up tournament to an official trophy, prevents the derby from being seen as a repeat of the previous ones.

Sporting head into the new season with Bernardo Pires in charge, after replacing Luís Magalhães. Under the new coach, the Lions won the Stromp Trophy by beating Braga, but it was João Fernandes who voiced the team’s ambition ahead of the Super Cup.

“We know it won’t be an easy game. We’ve already played two games against them and lost both, but the mindset is different,” he said. “I think that, at this moment, we’ve already switched into the mentality that this is for real, that we have goals to achieve as a team, and a trophy is always a trophy.”

The winger acknowledges the defeats, but clearly separates preparation from official competition. It is in this change of mentality that Sporting hope to find a different answer against an opponent that has already beaten them twice.

The historical weight of the trophy also adds to the derby. FC Porto are looking to reclaim the Super Cup and add another title to their museum, while Sporting are trying to win the third in their history, after their last triumph in 2022.

Benfica are the current holders of the trophy, after FC Porto’s win in 2024. In Albufeira, Dragons and Lions open the season with the first opportunity to turn pre-season work into official silverware.

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