Sporting Clube de Portugal B is the reserve team of Portuguese football club Sporting CP, a team based in Lisbon. Reserve teams in Portugal play in the same league system as the senior team, rather than in a reserve team league. However, they cannot play in the same division as their senior team, so Sporting B is ineligible for promotion to the Primeira Liga and could not play in the Taça de Portugal and Taça da Liga. The team play at the Estádio Aurélio Pereira in the Academia Cristiano Ronaldo which holds a seating capacity of 1,200.
Having been established in 2000, Sporting Portugal's B team operated until the end of the 2003–04 season when it was dissolved. The team was refounded in the 2012–13 season, when a new set of rules regarding B teams was introduced in the Portuguese football league system. In that season, another five B-teams were refounded and entered into Segunda Liga. In the 2017–18 season after the creation of a under-23 championship, club president Bruno de Carvalho announced the end of Sporting CP B.
President Frederico Varandas decided to refound Sporting CP B in 2019 and the team resumed operations in the 2020–21 Campeonato de Portugal. In 2021, Sporting CP B played in Liga 3, a new tier in the Portuguese league system.
History
Sporting CP had a B-team which competed in the third tier of the Portuguese football league system from 2000 to 2004.[1] This original iteration of Sporting CP B was the 1st club in the senior career of footballing legend Cristiano Ronaldo, where he debuted in a 2–1 away loss against Sport Clube Lusitânia on 1 September 2002, in the Azores.[2]
In late May 2012, it was officially announced that six Primeira Liga clubs' B teams would compete in the 2012–13 Segunda Liga including Sporting's B team. This would increase the number of teams in the league from 16 to 22 as well as increasing the number of games needed to play in one season from 30 games to 42 games.[3][4] Sporting B's first season back ended with a best-ever fourth place, under managers Oceano and later José Dominguez.[5]
After the announcement of the creation of an under-23 championship in February 2018, club president Bruno de Carvalho announced the end of Sporting CP B.[6]
After the dismissal of Carvalho in August 2018, Sousa Cintra reverted the former's decision, subscribing the reserve team to the new season in the Campeonato de Portugal (Portuguese football's third tier), but he later gave up, with Santa Iria replacing Sporting CP B.[7][8]
In 2019, President Frederico Varandas decided to reestablish Sporting CP B for the next year's Campeonato de Portugal.[9]
