Portugal
Liga 2
Sunday 3rd April 2022
Kick Off 11.00 Actual 11.03
Associacao Academica Coimbra 0 Casa Pia Atletico Clube 2, attendance 1,038
21’ 0-1
63’ 0-2
@ Estadio Cidade de Coimbra
Rua Dom Manuel I
3030-320 Coimbra
€5 Admission
No Programme.
We could have done another treble today, which would have involved a tier four game, followed by a tier three match, before finishing off with a top division game, but we opted instead to just go for a double, which would mean a much more relaxed day. It took around 1 hour 25 minutes to drive south from our overnight stay, arriving about 45 minutes before kick off. We parked in the street, no more than 200 yards from the stadium. From the outside, it looked more like a shopping centre, with much of the exterior being glass. It was another of the stadiums used in the Euro 2004 Championships, having been rebuilt and modernised for the event and has a seated capacity of 29,744. It also hosted the 2020 Portuguese Cup Final, between Benfica and Porto, which was moved from the National Stadium in Lisbon due to safety fears during the Covid-19 pandemic.
There is certainly no risk of Academica ever getting crowds anywhere near capacity. They are well adrift at the bottom of the league table and look certain to drop into Liga 3 at the end of the season. I had visited Casa Pia back in December 2019, when they themselves were second bottom in Liga 2, but today, they arrived here second in the table and look a good bet to gain promotion to the Primeira Liga, which shows how quickly things can be turned round. Their crowd that day was just 274 (70 odd were with the visitors Nacional) so to have 92 away fans present today was very impressive.
It was obvious from the start that there was only going to be one winner, but some poor finishing by the visitors and a battling performance by Academica kept it interesting. Casa Pia led 0-1 at the break, having opened the scoring when a defender diverted a cross past his own ’keeper whilst trying to clear the ball. The killer second goal came midway through the second half, the striker cutting in from the left before beating the ’keeper at his near post with an unstoppable shot into the top corner.
