The Portuguese Primeira Liga wraps up this weekend with Sporting CP hosting Santa Clara for matchday 34 at the Estadio Jose Alvalade. Unfortunately for Sporting fans, the Lions won’t be able to defend their league crown with Porto already having wrapped up the title. It took a historic season to dethrone Sporting as a win or a draw in their final match would give Porto the Primeira Liga record points total. Sporting still had an excellent season results wise and a win in this final match would see them finish on 85 points, the same amount which won them the league title last season. Sporting will come up against seventh-place Santa Clara who sit on 40 points and have had a strong final third of the season. The Azoreans have now only lost once in their last 11 matches, although seven of them have finished in draws. Their last match was a 2-0 home victory against Pacos de Ferreira while Sporting are coming off a 3-2 away win against Portimonense.
Sporting have been on an excellent run to close the season and have won eight of their last nine league matches. They expectedly enter this match as heavy favorites especially when considering Santa Clara’s horrid away record in the league. Santa Clara have only managed one away win this season, drawing seven and losing the remaining eight. They’ll face one of the toughest matches on the fixture list as Sporting have a stellar home record of 13-1-2 while only conceding eight goals in their 16 matches. We’re going to focus on the visitors' scoring struggles combined with the hosts' league leading clean sheet numbers to arrive at our bet in this one. Sporting should be able to get the three points here while keeping a clean sheet in a match that likely stays under the 3.5 goals total.
We’re going with Sporting to win and under 3.5 goals as our bet for this match. This is a great spot for this type of combo wager given the low attacking output by the visitors combined with the excellent defensive solidity of the hosts. Sporting to win to nil is another bet that should have some value as see the Lions taking this one by a score of 2-0.