I got this letter from Michael G. Risley, he is a Liverpool fan who now resides in Portugal and is involved with Sporting Lisbon. Good point to note is that Sporting also have a great relationship with Celtic and in fact are known as the “The Lisbon Lions”.
To all of the Liverpool faithful,
As you may know, Sporting Clube de Portugal (Sporting Lisbon as we all know it) will be coming over to play against the other half of Merseyside in the Europa League. I am mentioning this because I, as a life long Liverpool fan that grew up a stones throw away from Anfield, now work at Sporting. A few odd twists and turns saw me move to Portugal and get a job here. I am the club’s translator and also write the English version of their website. You can take my word for it; these boys are the Liverpool of Lisbon. They sing their heads off like us, they support their team until the end like us and they only worry about themselves and not the other half of the city (Benfica in Lisbon, Everton in Liverpool). This is a fantastic chance for us to build a relationship between the two groups of fans. So what I am proposing is this: if any of you are from one of the Liverpool fan groups, or know somebody that is, come and have a drink with the travelling Sporting fans and come to the game with us to support Sporting and get to know the fans. I have already talked with the fan groups here and they love the idea. You remember when Liverpool played Fiorentina away earlier this season and their fans were great with us? Fiorentina and Sporting have an amazing friendship and the biggest fan group here has a Fiorentina flag every game. Imagine they had a Liverpool flag and we had a Sporting flag too! Both clubs have won 18 titles, came within 4 points last season and are having a bit of a funny one this time around. What more do you need to know? If you are interested email me at mgrisley@sporting.pt
YNWA and SL (SL means “saudações leoninas” – its what Sporting fans say instead of YNWA to each other – it pretty much means “Salutations to a fellow Lion”).