Today’s exhibit from the European football club lapel badge collection features another of the not inconsiderable number sporting our favoured green & white livery, the colours of the mighty & beloved Sporting Clube de Portugal, Sporting Lisbon.
I can’t recall exactly when the attraction & devotion to Sporting dates from, but they did happen to win what has thus far proved to be their only European club trophy, the late & much-missed (at least at TOoT) Cup-Winners’ Cup, in 1964 (beating the also-favoured MTK Budapest 1 – 0 in the replayed Final following an initial 3 – 3 draw which must have been a fabulous end-to-ender: it obviously enthused at least some of the Belgian public, with 19,000 turning out to witness the second match after a tragically paltry but very lucky 3,000 had attended the first), but a few months before my birth: whatever, the club’s green & white hooped shirts with black shorts combo exerts a powerful aesthetic appeal.
This particular badge relates to yesterday’s entry in that it arrived by post all the way from Dnepropetrovsk, of all places, as its addressing & stamping bears witness &, within, wrapped in a Cyrillic-printed sheet for added exoticism & continental kudos. Needless to say, Sporting v Dnepr would make a most desirable European club competition fixture, any day of the week.
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