The Sporting da Covilhã Sentinel
Squad21 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Rui Peixoto
120 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sporting da Covilhã lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match21 Dec 2026
Sporting da Covilhã refuse to drop out of the race
Position 3, 26 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Squad21 Dec 2026
A falling-out at Sporting da Covilhã
Jónatas Noro and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Francisco Soares is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Diego Riechelmann falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
Kevin Chamorro gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Match19 Dec 2026
A bad afternoon for Sporting da Covilhã against Atlético CP
0‑1 to Atlético CP, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Looking ahead21 Dec 2026
Top-of-the-table clash for Sporting da Covilhã
Belenenses next, and the two sides the division is watching meet each other. Whoever wins will be told nothing is decided in the same breath as being congratulated.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Paulo Moreira to a room that had heard them before.
In brief
- Player ratings Ramon runs at them all day
- Player ratings The chances came and went for Gustavo Oliveira
- Looking ahead Mica goes back to face Belenenses