When a summary of Everton’s season is made, you will find Lisbon running through its heart. Victories against Chelsea and Manchester United were supposed to have emphasised the transformation of David Moyes’ side from the shambles that suffered their heaviest European defeat at Benfica in October. However, when Pedro Mendes’ shot crashed into the Everton net, one of football’s strangest sequences was maintained.
Beginning with Manchester United in the 1964 Cup Winners Cup, Sporting Lisbon have met English opposition seven times in knockout contests and won through on each occasion. This time it was bewilderingly straightforward.
Until another defensive injury, this time to Philippe Senderos forced his hand seven minutes into the second half, Moyes did not, after all, decide to toss Phil Jagielka into the moderately deep end. Despite their hauntingly good record against English opponents, Sporting Lisbon have not looked like the club that produced Cristiano Ronaldo and Nani. They have not won any of their last six fixtures and their recently appointed manager, Carlos Carvalhal, was asked in the pre-match press conference if he would resign if that figure became seven.
However, Everton have invested plenty in the Europa League and four months ago in the same city Moyes had sat embarrassed in the Estádio da Luz as Benfica bewitched and bewildered a desperately inexperienced defence.
Philippe Senderos, with his dodgy back, was preferable to a man whose last competitive game had been last April. Joseph Yobo, who only arrived in Portugal late last night because of visa problems, stood alongside him. It was a better back four than had faced Benfica, but it still looked an uncertain unit and Sporting Lisbon carried the momentum that their away goal late in the first leg at Goodison Park had given them.
Senderos did put the ball in Sporting’s net but he was patently offside when meeting Leighton Baines’s free-kick in what proved Everton’s only threat to Rui Patrício’s goal in the first half. However, it was his foul on Yannick Djaló – although the striker may have dived – that gave Sporting their best chance of a quick breakthrough. João Moutinho, whom Moyes had tried several times to bring to Merseyside, slammed the resultant free-kick against the crossbar and had there been a better natural finisher than Tonel, the right-back, to meet the rebound, Sporting would have had the early goal their supporters craved.
But for a stunning save from Tim Howard from Moutinho, it would have come on the hour mark. But the wait would endure only for another four minutes as Miguel Veloso burst into the left side of the Everton area and beat Howard at his near post. Then, in injury time, the substitute Matias Fernández caught Everton short at the back and completed the rout.
Those Everton fans who had exchanged one great Atlantic city for another and happily occupied its main square, the Praca Don Pedro, must have thought this journey would have a different ending. Everton are a different team to the one they were on October but the memories of Lisbon remained the same.
Uefa Europa LeagueSporting LisbonEvertonTim Richguardian.co.uk
