Sporting's Pedro Gonçalves won the top scorer title in Portugal
The final round of the 2020/2021 season in the Portuguese top league Primeira Liga was played yesterday. Sporting had already won the league a couple of rounds ago, winning their first league title since the 2001/2002 season. They were hit by a scandal in 2018 when hooligans stormed the club's training and attacked the players, which led to several players breaking their contracts with the club, which makes the performance this season even more impressive.The top scorer fight was more dramatic
The league was settled before the final round, which led to that not all the matches in the final round were played at the same time. The match between Sporting and Maritimo was played as the last match after all other teams played their last matches. The standing in the top scorer list before the final round was that Sporting's Pedro Gonçalves (also known as Pote) and Benfica's Swiss Haris Seferovic both had scored 20 goals each. They had followed each other in the top of the top scorer list for several weeks before the final round.Benfica played Vitoria Guimarães in their last match of the season and after 0-0 at half time, Seferovic struck shortly after kick-off in the second half and scored 1-0 for Benfica. He also scored 2-0 a few minutes later, thus scoring two goals scored in Benfica's 3-1 victory. With a two-goal lead ahead of Gonçalves at that time, it seemed as if he would win his his second top scorer title in Portugal (he also won the top scorer title 2018/2019).
So was it settled then? Well, Gonçalves obviously had decided not to give up on winning the title. Already 20 minutes after kick-off, Gonçalves had put two balls in the net against Maritimo and the two players were now side by side in the top again. But Gonçalves was not done, in minute 62 he completed his hat trick in the match when he scored the 4-0 goal, and thus he was not only catching up with Seferovic but also passed him, becoming the sole winner of top scorer title in Portugal 2020/2021. Sporting eventually won the match with 5-1.
Sporting's 22-year-old Portuguese Pedro Gonçalves previously belonged to English Wolverhampton but never really got a chance to prove himself there. He was released to FC Famalicão and in the 2019/2020 season he scored five goals for them signing for Sporting in August 2020 and in his first in Sporting he really exploded. He is yet another of many young talented Portuguese offensive players and it will be exciting to follow him in the future.
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