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A game worn Puma with Sporting written twice: on the SCSC crest with its rampant lion, a loving copy of Alvalade's, and on the Santa Clara SPORTING flocked in black across the chest, the old fashioned way. Match worn with 22 on the back, it came from the club's senior amateur teams, which compete in the Bay Area leagues, and carries the honest wear of real games.

It served in 2016 at one of the diaspora's most beautiful secrets: the club that Portuguese emigrants founded in 1971 to bring Alvalade to California, grown into a national elite academy, with US youth internationals by the handful and Brandi Chastain on the coaching staff. Nine thousand kilometres from Lisbon, this lion has roared in Silicon Valley for half a century.

Here at Hoopster this piece touches us where it hurts most and tastes best: an archive born of Sporting meets the Sporting that saudade rebuilt on the other side of the world. The hoops always find their way home.