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Sporting CP kept the pressure on the Liga Portugal leaders with a hard-earned 2-0 win at Casa Pia on Friday night, Pedro Lima scoring on his first start before substitute Geny Catamo raced clear in stoppage time to roll the ball into an empty net at the Estadio Municipal de Rio Maior.
Lima makes his first start count
Sporting struck early. In the 13th minute Ivan Fresneda created the opener and Pedro Lima finished with his left foot, a goal on his first start that settled the visitors and gave them something to protect for the rest of the night in Rio Maior.
Casa Pia, 17th in the table with seven points from 10 games, did not fold. They stayed in the contest, competed for every second ball and forced Sporting to defend their box, but the final pass kept letting them down. The match data on Elbotola underlines the gap in the final third: Sporting finished with 11 shots on target to Casa Pia's two.
Sequeira keeps Casa Pia alive until the end
If Casa Pia were still chasing the game in the final minutes, they owed it to Patrick Sequeira. The goalkeeper produced an outstanding performance, repeatedly denying Sporting a second goal and keeping the home crowd believing an equaliser might yet come.
Sporting's Luis Suarez was kept out, the pressure kept building, and still the second goal would not arrive. Maxi Araujo went into the book in the third minute of stoppage time as the tension rose, and Casa Pia threw everything forward, including Sequeira himself, for one last corner.
That gamble decided the game. Sporting cleared, Fresneda sent Geny Catamo away from inside his own half — which is why there was no offside, a point debated after the match and explained in the data on OddAlerts — and the Mozambican winger, on as a 62nd-minute substitute for Luis Guilherme, outran the cover and finished left-footed into the unguarded net in the 94th minute. It was Fresneda's second assist of the night.
So what it means for the title race
Sporting move to 21 points from 10 games — six wins, three draws and one defeat — and stay third, firmly in touch with the leaders rather than watching the title race drift away in October. Wins like this, ground out away from home against a side fighting the drop, are the ones title challenges are built on.
For Casa Pia the table still makes grim reading: 17th, two wins all season and now another home defeat. But the performance, and Sequeira's display in particular, gives them something real to build on. At the other end of Friday night's European action, there was late drama in France too, where Lille edged the Derby du Nord — a reminder that one-goal margins are deciding big games everywhere this weekend. And for African stars deciding matches across Europe, Catamo's night belongs in the same conversation as Osimhen and his latest Galatasaray heroics.
Beyond the Final Whistle: this was not a pretty Sporting performance, it was a champion's performance — an early goal, a goalkeeper-inspired siege survived, and then the coldest possible finish from Catamo when Casa Pia finally overcommitted. Lima announcing himself on his first start gives Sporting another weapon, Fresneda's two assists show their width is now a genuine supply line, and Catamo keeps proving he is the man for the game's biggest minute. Title races are won in Rio Maior on Friday nights, not just in the big stadiums.
Can Casa Pia turn performances like this into the points they need to climb out of the bottom two, or will Sequeira's heroics keep going to waste? Let us know in the comments.