Santa Clara are living a really crisis this season. In Portugal is almost rule when a team achieves for the first time European places that in the next season are fighting to avoid relegation places like happened with Arouca and with Estoril some years ago. A lot of important players and staff left the club this season and that's the main reason to explain this crisis, first they lost their top goalscorer from the last season Carlos JR who joined Al Shabab, Ukra to Rio Ave, the centre-back Fabio Cardoso after an amazing season and the pillar in the defense, lost the coach who achieved the best place in Santa Clara's history Daniel Ramos to Saudi Arabia aswell and another important piece they lost was the sports director Diogo Boa Alma, and was after his left that the team started to fall in the table. They have too a lot of injuries like the best centre-back Mikel Villanueva, Boateng, the striker Cryzan, the midfielder Costinha and Allano in doubt. Recently they beat Porto 3-1 at home for the league cup but Porto rotated the whole team as it was a game for the League Cup but even with such rotation Porto was clearly better than Santa Clara and deserved to win that game as they missed so many clear chances. Santa Clara decided to buy a coach with zero experience, who was 2nd coach of Roma working with Paulo Fonseca and it's his first experience as the main coach.

Probable line-up: Marco; Rafael Ramos - Tassano - Joao Afonso - Mansur; Anderson Carvalho - Morita - Lincoln; Allano/Rui Costa - Jean Patric and Ricardinho

FC Porto are improving after a false start that the coach Sergio Conceiçao alerted the players for. Since Sergio Conceiçao is the coach of Porto they are so competitive in every competition and as a prove of that the first loss he had for the other national competitions (Cup, League Cup and Supercup) the first loss he had in the 90 minutes was now against Santa Clara for the League Cup in 4 seasons. This is an amazing achievement. For Champions League they already achieved the quarter-finals with him by 2 times and this year they are in the group of death and even with that are in a qualification position (2nd place) and just depend on them. They are in the best moment of the season as their best players like Luis Diaz who likely will leave the team in the break of January for a big team as at the moment he is one of the best wingers in the world. They know the importance of this game as after this competition there will be an international break and with Sergio Conceiçao I cannot remember a game where they lost points before an international break. I expect the same game they did against Santa Clara (creating a lot of chances) but now with the best XI with Luis Diaz, Otavio, Sergio Oliveira and Taremi from the start. I cannot see Porto losing points here to be honest. They are so much better than Santa Clara and with a big must win.

Probable line-up: Diogo Costa; Joao Mario - Mbemba - Pepe - Wendel; Sergio Oliveira - Grujic - Otavio - Luis Diaz; Evanilson and Taremi.

圣克拉拉本赛季正经历一场真正的危机。在葡萄牙，当一支球队在下个赛季第一次获得欧战资格，就像几年前阿鲁卡和埃斯托里尔那样，他们正在努力避免降级名额，这成为了一个魔咒。许多重要的球员和工作人员本赛季离开了俱乐部，这是这场危机的主要原因，首先，他们失去了上赛季的最佳射手 Carlos JR，他加入了 Al Shabab, Ukra 转会到 Rio Ave，还失去了在球队历史上取得最佳成绩的教练丹尼尔·拉莫斯 (Daniel Ramos) ，后者去了沙特阿拉伯。他们失去的另一个重要人物是体育总监迪奥戈·博阿·阿尔玛 (Diogo Boa Alma)，在他离开后球队开始在积分榜上下滑。他们有太多的伤病，比如最好的中后卫米克尔·维拉纽瓦、博阿滕、前锋克里赞、中场科斯蒂尼亚和阿拉诺都有伤病。最近他们在联赛杯主场3-1击败波尔图，但波尔图轮换了整个球队，因为这是一场联赛杯的比赛，但即使如此轮换波尔图显然比圣克拉拉更好，本可以赢得那场比赛，他们错过了很多明显的机会。圣克拉拉决定聘请一位零经验的教练，他是罗马的助理教练，与保罗丰塞卡合作，这是他第一次担任主教练。

在教练塞尔吉奥·康塞索警告球员们之后，波尔图足球俱乐部正在改善。由于塞尔吉奥·孔塞索是波尔图的教练，他们在每场比赛中都非常有竞争力，并证明他在其他国家比赛（杯赛、联赛杯和超级杯）上的第一场失利，他在 90 分钟内的第一场失利是现在在 4 个赛季的联赛杯中对阵圣克拉拉。这是一个了不起的成就。对于欧冠，上赛季他们已经和进入了四分之一决赛，今年他们处于死亡之组，现在他们排在第二，能否出线他们自己有主动权。他们正处于本赛季最好的时刻，因为像路易斯·迪亚兹这样的最佳球员很可能会在一月份的休息时间离开球队前往一支大球队，因为他目前是世界上最好的边锋之一。他们知道这场比赛的重要性，因为在这场比赛之后会有一个国际比赛日，而塞尔吉奥·孔塞索的球队几乎不会在国际比赛日之前丢分。我期待他们在对阵圣克拉拉的比赛中和此前的杯赛一样表现出色（创造了很多机会），本场他们会派上最强阵容，我不认为波尔图会在本场丢分。他们比圣克拉拉要好得多，而且必须赢得胜利。