LAS VEGAS — Sporting Lisbon turned up the Champions League heat on the Arctic Minnows.
The Norwegian club Bodø/Glimt, from a small fishing village on the chilly side of the Arctic Circle, could only last so long, so far out over its skis.
Excellent CBS Sports play-by-play announcer Chris Wittyngham called it something like “Buddha,” lexicon we adopt gladly.
“Counter-punchers supreme,” he called Buddha, which beat Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and Serie A leader Inter Milan twice in the run-up to its round-of-16, two-leg series against Sporting.
When the competition started in late August, Buddha’s CL title odds were 500-to-1 at the Westgate SuperBook, 1,000-1 at Circa Sports.
Sweet profits could have been extracted along the way. For instance, Buddha was +830 to defeat Inter in their second leg; the Norwegians won 2-1 before 70,441 at the hallowed San Siro in Milan.
When it beat Sporting 3-0 before 7,971 inside its Aspmyra Stadion on March 11, Buddha’s title odds were 150-1.
Its balloon popped in the second leg, when Sporting popped in four goals in the final 30 minutes of regulation and 30 of extra time. Sporting won 5-3.
Sporting attacker Pedro “Pote” Gonçalves, who missed that first match, made a magnificent difference in the second.
Buddha parked the bus to focus on defense, which backfired spectacularly. Sporting had huge advantages in corners (16-4) and shots (38-9), advancing to play Arsenal.
Bye, bye, Arctic Minnows.
“We did not play the game, we played the occasion,” Buddha gaffer Kjetil Knutsen told the BBC, “and it became far too big for us.”
No rest
Against Euro titans FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, AC Milan and Inter Milan and defending champ Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), squads like Buddha get squished, typically early.
Buddha, though, became the northernmost team to reach such a late CL stage.
Plus, it became the first non-Big Five side to beat four Big Fives in a row since Johann Cruyff and Ajax Amsterdam in 1971-72.
Eng
