After three days of serous drinking and partying in the ALS apartment and around the town with various random women, it was time to sort our heads out and prepare professionally for the game. Well that was the plan at breakfast anyway.

By the time yours truly had gone into town to pick up his laptop, which had been repaired just in time to write this report and returned to the pool, the lads and lasses were back on the Sangria and Red Bull! Oh well.

Randomly, it turned out the lad who managed the PC repair store was also captain of the local semi-pro team whose ground Sunderland’s squad are training at. To begin with he was having none of it, lots of head shakes and “Sorry I have no time to fix this laptop” type comments. However, eventually we struck up a conversation and when he found out the machine was to be used for footballing purposes he shelved all other work and fixed my partitioned hard drive, whatever that means. Cheers Marcos.

After a team talk Hardy went to bed at 3pm to prepare for the match, apparently footballers do the same before games to help them stay fresh. My next task was to get Aston to go to the shops and replace all the wine he’d stolen from the owner of our apartment. The booze was hidden in a locked cupboard, but when you need a drink at 5am and there are guests to entertain, locks can be picked quite easily.

So after our pre-match meal we headed off to the Estadio Municipal once more to have the crack and hope and pray that Keano may play more than one man up front, not that we have many strikers to choose from at the moment.

Thankfully, we had two strikers on show and an incredibly large inflatable penis in the stands once more. Amazingly we had more supporters than Setubal at the game showing once more that we are mint fans, or mental, or both.

The wind was strong and that led to Vitoria taking the lead through a set piece which basically flew in. We weren’t that arsed and equalised just before half time through Richardson. To celebrate we nipped out of the ground during the interval to the local bar for a beverage.

It seemed loads of other SAFC lads had the same idea, due to no beer being on sale in our end and by the time we got there the bar was packed and there was a great atmosphere. We got introduced to two lads and two very nice girls from the Faroe Islands. They’d been fortunate enough to be staying in the same hotel as some Mackems, and had been converted to the cause and were loving the love of the Mackem bosom.

After returning from the ale house suitably refreshed, there was the usual 765 changes at half time that I couldn’t be bothered to note down, but we passed the ball better in the second period and generally dominated.

We were informed during the evening that Teemu Tainio had signed on the dotted line and chants were made up immediately. Sod all else happened on the pitch so we went out and got drunk.

Final Score: 1-1

ALS Man of the Match: Hardy for actually getting out of bed for the match.

Bobby Blue

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