Benfica-Sporting: fasts, droughts and points of honor that make the Cup derby more special

Benfica hasn’t won the Portuguese Cup in seven years, Sporting last won it five years ago. These are unusual droughts in the competition for both and the coincidence also makes this one of the longest periods ever without any of Lisbon’s biggest rivals celebrating at Jamor. Which reinforces the weight of the first of the week’s two derbies, separated by five days. There will be a lot at stake in both and this Tuesday’s duel reserves the first major decision, also packing Sporting and Benfica for Saturday, when they play in Alvalade the last direct confrontation in the race for the title, with one point separating them.

Roger Schmidt and Rúben Amorim have emphasized the importance of the Portuguese Cup and did so again in the preview of the Luz duel, where Sporting arrives with a 2-1 lead from the first leg.

Benfica: longest fast lasted ten seasons

«We have a lot of motivation to reach the final», said Schmidt, who last season, in his debut on the Benfica bench, reached the quarter-finals, eliminated by Sp. Braga. Now he has gone further, in pursuit of a goal that has long eluded Benfica. The club with the best record in the competition, which has 26 victories in total, has not won at Jamor since 2017, when they beat V. Guimarães in the final. At Luz, Rafa is the only player left from that team. After that, Benfica lost two finals, in 2020 with FC Porto and the following season with Sp. Braga.

Benfica’s longest period without winning the Portuguese Cup occurred between 2004 and 2014, ten seasons. Before that, they had twice gone through series of eight seasons without winning the trophy, first between 1972 and 1980 and then between 1996 and 2004. At this point, they are now in the fourth longest streak without winning in the premier competition. Furthermore, this prolonged drought in the Eagles’ history is even more accentuated if we add the League Cup, which Benfica has not won since 2016.

Sporting: overtaking FC Porto and Amorim in search of first

Sporting has 17 victories in the Portuguese Cup and has been surpassed in recent years in the competition by FC Porto, which has won three of the last four editions and currently has 19 victories, and continues in the race this season, with the first leg of the half -final against V. Guimarães scheduled for Wednesday. Sporting’s last victory was in 2019, precisely against FC Porto, and from that decision on penalties there is also only one player left in the current squad, Sebastián Coates. Since then, the “lions” have not been in the final again.

Rúben Amorim only won one Portuguese Cup and that was as a player, wearing the Benfica shirt. In 2014, he was a starter in Benfica’s victory over Rio Ave. As a coach, he has never won and is still looking for his first appearance in the final, in his fourth season playing in the competition, always on the Sporting bench. After an elimination in the round of 16 against Marítimo, the lost semi-final against FC Porto with two defeats in 2022 and, above all, the farewell in the third round last season with Varzim, the Taça de Portugal became a kind of point of honor, for the coach and for the club. “We really want to be in the final. It had been an objective for some time», said Amorim this Monday.

When Lisbon’s two rivals disappear from the list at the same time

In the history of Sporting there are several periods of long periods of losing the Portuguese Cup, the longest of which was 13 seasons, between 1982 and 1995. In this century, there was an interval of seven seasons without victories between 2007 and 2015. What It’s rare for both of Lisbon’s greats to go long periods without winning the Cup.

The longest interval without any victory for Benfica and Sporting in the Cup was six years, just one more than the one they are going through at this time. It happened three times, all since the rise of FC Porto in the 1980s, which changed the balance of forces in Portuguese football. Until 1984, the “dragons” had five Portuguese Cups in 43 editions of the competition. In the following four decades they added 14 more.

FC Porto is naturally the main responsible for the longest periods of prolonged simultaneous absence of their rivals in the Portuguese Cup’s history, although they have brought some new names to the competition’s history. The first of these periods was particularly “democratic”. Between Benfica’s two victories in 1987 and 1993, there were two Porto triumphs and three more winners: Belenenses, Estrela da Amadora for the first time and Boavista.

Then, between Benfica’s victory in 1996 – the last against Sporting, tragically marked by the very light that killed a Lions fan – and Sporting’s victory in 2002, FC Porto won three editions, with Boavista and Beira Mar, another unprecedented triumph, adding up to one victory each. Finally, Sporting’s victory in 2008 was followed by another period of drought for their rivals, interrupted by Benfica’s 2014 triumph and marked by three more victories for FC Porto, one for Académica and another for V. Guimarães, plus a new name for the competition’s achievements.

Since 2019 and Sporting’s last victory, FC Porto has celebrated three more times at Jamor, a series only interrupted by Sp. Braga in 2021. Now, the time has come to decide which of the two Lisbon rivals will now see their crossing over the desert in the Portuguese Cup and which will try to keep alive the expectation of celebrating again at Jamor.