Sporting CP Deliberately Misspell Players' Names On Back Of Shirts

Portuguese football fans were left bemused yesterday during Sporting CP's emphatic 5-1 victory over Arouca as the home team took the field with wrongly spelled names on the back of their shirts.

Teo Gutierrez for instance had the back of his jersey emblazoned with 'Guterres' instead of his customary 'Teo', while Joao Mario was rechristened 'J.Dario'. The home fans' confusion lasted the entirety of the first half until the stadium announcer informed the home support at half time that the stunt was a project to stop people purchasing counterfeit shirts.

We're not sure whether the idea will encourage fans to buy official club merchandise over dodgy fake alternatives but nonetheless it didn't seem to affect Sporting's performance as they stormed into a 4-0 first half lead en route to a 5-1 victory which kept the pressure on leaders Benfica.

(H/T 101 Great Goals)

Topics: Football, Sporting CP

Joe Baiamonte

Northerner. Assistant Editor of SPORTbible. Studied Journalism and Broadcasting in a portakabin on a car park of Salford University for three years. Believes football peaked with Serie A in the '90s and strong-arms pro wrestling references into as many articles as possible. Neymar once took 50 euros off me during a game of poker.

@JoeBaia