Dedication

I think naturally whenever anyone does anything the first question someone asks is: "Why?". So I'll just knock that out right off the bat. This site, all the work and data that went into it is dedicated and for my grandfather Julio Aires. Some of my earliest memories are listening to a muffled Portuguese hand radio station transmitting a Sporting game live to our family room (seemingly everytime my grandparents visited). 100% of the time I didn't understand what was happening nor did I really care.

But as I have gotten a bit more wisdom, and perspective (as well as a new found love for soccer), I understand now a little more what Sporting means to my grandfather, and what any team really means to anyone who cares enough. Sporting is his Portuguese heritage, it is a defining part of who he is... and I want it to be a defining part of who I am. There are many ways I want to be like my Grandfather, and supporting Sporting is as close to the top of the list as anything else. It is tradition and history to me, it's about carrying on a legacy.

So that’s what SportingCP.ai is. It’s my way of starting to carry on the legacy my Grandfather built. So Vovô, you taught me a lot, and just one of those things I am really starting to appreciate now - and it's a passion for Sporting. Here is my way to kick it off:

What SportingCP.ai does

• Next game - Boom, no more googling who and when does Sporting play next
• Model-backed probabilities - Where is the fun in just showing vegas odds? These are the real predictions
• Digestible content - Expected goals, transparent math, and a historical ledger of predictions.

Looking past the odds

Markets are sharp, but they are still markets. Building a pipeline that ingests match data, retrains models, and recalibrates probabilities gives me a second opinion - a Sporting-first view that respects the club's form, injuries, and quirks. Sometimes it agrees with Vegas. Sometimes it nudges me to trust the academy kids a little more.

Where the blog comes in

This blog will be the place I document that journey: the experiments that worked, the misses, and the Sporting stories that shaped the product decisions. But it’s also meant to be more than a changelog. It’s a living record of growth - of both a model and a fan.

You’ll find reflections on match days, deep dives into metrics, and personal notes that bridge code with culture. It’s where I’ll think out loud about what the numbers don’t say, about how technology can amplify tradition instead of replacing it.

If you’re reading along, you’re sharing in the dedication that started all of this - the same love that filled my grandparents’ living room on game days. Hope you enjoy reading along with my thoughts and evolution as a Sporting CP fan.

Love you Vovô.