Football
Football is the most popular sport in Portugal and the Primeira Liga is the most important sports championship, where the top teams earn a place in the most demanding and profitable European football competitions, the UEFA Champions League and the Europa League. The club's football team has won 18 national championship titles, 15 national cups and the former Cup Winners' Cup in 1964. In the late 2000s, Sporting has failed to win a championship but consistently finished second place behind Porto and ahead of Benfica.
Sporting has been a major contender in the Primeira Liga since its inception. The club's football department has developed an increasingly professionalized profile which operates in an increasingly competitive environment in both Portugal and Europe. In 1998, the football department of the club was reorganized into a company and issued stock on the market. Since then, Sporting – Sociedade Desportiva de Futebol, S.A.D., is a publicly traded company which is listed on the Euronext Lisbon stock exchange.
Read more about this topic: Sporting Clube De Portugal
Famous quotes containing the word football:
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Libertys torch. In football you run over somebodys face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“...Im not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but whats the difference? You cant take it with you. The toys get different, thats all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. Its all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“People stress the violence. Thats the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it theres a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. Theres a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, theres a satisfaction to the game that cant be duplicated. Theres a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)