|
October 2009
(A version of this article appeared on the website of the British football magazine When Saturday Comes)
The chicotada psicológica ('psychological whiplash') is a favourite tactic of club presidents in Portugal. When results are not going just so, it's the coach that feels the whip on his back, and he's out of the door. The theory is that the shock of the dismissal, and a new hand at the helm, will have a positive psychological effect on the players. The tactic is not unique to Portugal, obviously, but the country can justifiably claim European supremacy in this area.
With just eight games played in the Liga, seven clubs have already changed coaches: Naval, Vitória de Setúbal, Marítimo, Académica, Vitória de Guimarães, Paços de Ferreira and União de Leiria. Only
two of the changes were not chicotadas: in a career move, Paulo Sérgio left Paços to join a much bigger club, Vitória de Guimarães, with Ulisses Morais, sacked from Naval, taking over at Paços. Manuel
Fernandes, a hero for Sporting in the 80s, left União de Leiria to follow his heart to Vitória de Setúbal, the last club he represented as a player and the first one he served as a coach, 22 years ago. Of the other
changes, many eyes will be on former assistant to José Mourinho, André Villas Boas, in his first full coaching job at bottom-of-the-table Académica. Meanwhile, at Marítimo, Dutchman Mitchell Van der Gaag will need
eyes in the back of his head to keep a lookout for the knife; it's not unknown for the Madeiran club to get through three or four coaches a year.
Sports daily A Bola compared Portugal's record so far this season with other leagues in Europe, highlighting five changes in Italy, four in Greece and a surprising four in Germany, normally perceived here as a paradigm of stability. As is England, with no changes so far; the Ferguson and Wenger-type phenomenon in particular is spoken of with wonderment here. The nearest the Portuguese game comes to that kind of longevity nowadays is Paulo Bento at Sporting. He's been with the club for four years, but is hanging by a thread after a poor start to the season, made worse by comparison with the explosive form of neighbours and bitter rivals Benfica.
The Sporting president, José Eduardo Bettencourt, has regularly voiced his support for Paulo Bento, but the growing dissatisfaction from sportinguistas, manifested in the whistles and white
handkerchiefs at the increasingly sparsely populated Alvalade stadium, will surely force him to get the whip out some time soon. But whether it's Paulo Bento or another coach, perhaps even one of those who are just
beginning to warm the bench at their new club, we're certain to hear the chicotada again this season, most likely on a number of occasions.
In the last 25 years, 1987/88 was the season that saw the most movement: 15 clubs (out of 20) changed coaches at least once, some of them more times. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the record will be
matched or broken this time around.
15/08/09
(A version of this article appeared on the website of the British football magazine When Saturday Comes)
Failing an extremely unlikely historical blip (Boavista's success in 2001 being one such case), you can again choose from three for the Portuguese title.
The six million Benfica fans (sez they) around the world were jubilant last Christmas. The team were sitting on top of the table and were thus the (highly unofficial) Winter Champions. It didn't last,
naturally, and they trundled in third behind FC Porto and Sporting. But wave any straw in front of a benfiquista's nose and he'll grasp at it. The close season has given them two more to clutch: transfers and
friendlies. As Águias have signed nine players (for around 24 million euros … that they haven't got), making them the transfer runners-up (Porto have signed 11) but they will claim a victory in terms of quality. Some of them actually do look handy for a change, especially Saviola and Javi Garcia from Real, and Ramires from Cruzeiro. They, along with a Pablo Aimar re-born under new coach Jorge Jesus, and a Di Maria looking five years more mature than last season's ineffectual waif, have helped Benfica to four bits of pre-season silverware (Guadiana, Amsterdam, City of Guimarães and their own Eusébio Cup against AC Milan). Nuno Gomes has tried to put a lid on the euphoria bubbling furiously away in benfiquista hearts: "We haven't won anything yet," he's said. In a nutshell, Nuno.
But Benfica do look in a better position than they have been for a long time to challenge Porto's hegemony (14 titles in the last two decades to Benfica's three, Sporting's two and Boavista's one) and stop
their march to a second Penta (five straight titles) during that time. Os Dragões have had to replace the highly influential midfielder Lucho González (Marseille), plus the striker Lisandro and full back Cissokho (Lyon), sold for a whopping total of 57 million euros … making Porto the top transfer earners by a mile. However, anyone doubting their ability to adapt need only look back to last season when they started shakily after losing Pepe, Bosingwa and Quaresma but eventually came through with the goods. 'Addicted to winning' was A Bola's
headline after Porto won the first official trophy of the season, the SuperTaça Cândido de Oliveira against Paços de Ferreira (2-0). This will be Porto's main weapon once again: their mystique of invincibility. It helps of course that they also have some not-half-bad players, newcomers Varela and Belluschi among them. And then there's the – why not? – incredible Hulk, who disappointed in the showcase Manchester United games last season but, already in blistering form, must surely explode onto the international scene this. A question mark over Porto's prospects will be whether they can hold onto skipper Bruno Alves; a move to Barça is still on the cards, and his towering presence at the Dragão would be sorely missed.
As for the last of the Três Grandes, Sporting … well, they've gone for financial stability, meaning that they've signed just four players, including Matias Fernández from Villareal and Caicedo from
Manchester City. Looking on the positive side, this should mean a continuity advantage over their rivals, but pre-season performances have been poor; there was already frustrated whistling coming from the Alvalade
stands in the first leg of the Champions League qualifier against Twente, which must be a record for premature dissatisfaction.
Key for Sporting again will be perennial top-scorer Liedson, whose naturalisation papers are due through soon. He will then be available for call-up to the Portuguese national team for the vital World Cup
qualifiers against Denmark and Hungary in September; if he gets the nod from Queiroz, he'll be the third Luso-Brazilian to represent the Selecção after Deco and Pepe. There are already protectionist noises coming from the Players' Union, which recently published figures for foreigners registered to play in the league last season (53.7% of all players – second in Europe, apparently, after England with 59%). Thirty years ago this week, Benfica fielded their first ever foreigner: the Brazilian Jorge Gomes (11/08/79). On 24 July this year, they beat Sunderland 2-0 in Amsterdam, starting with ten South Americans and just one European … the Spanish Javi Garcia.
Refreshingly, though, all the top tier clubs will begin the season with Portuguese coaches … unless, that is, there are any last minute sackings before it all kicks off this weekend. It wouldn't be the first time.
13/07/09
(A version of this article appeared in the August 2009 edition of the British football magazine When Saturday Comes)
The turn of the century was very kind to Boavista FC. They'd built up a head of steam domestically in the late 90s but still surprised everyone in Portuguese football by winning the title in 2001 – only
the second team outside the Três Grandes (FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting) to do so, the other being Belenenses in 1946. Around this time also, As Panteras (The Panthers) were putting in very respectable performances in Europe, the highlight a UEFA Cup semi-final in 2003 which Celtic just shaded. Paradoxically, however, it was this purple period that was a key contributing factor to Boavista's current plight.
One of the ten stadiums to be used for Euro 2004, the Bessa XXI was completed in time for the club's centenary in 2003. It cost around 45 million euros, 7.5 million of which was stumped up by the State.
But the club, heady on its success, had seriously overstretched itself with the stadium, and the income wasn't there to fill the financial hole. While the Três Grandes had, at least on paper, 100,000 or more sócios (fee-paying members), Boavista struggled to reach 20,000. The 30,000-seater Bessa was rarely more than a third full.
Meanwhile, in the mid-noughties, stories began to emerge of difficulties in paying money due to former players, most notably Martelinho, a hero of the 2001 title. These debts were the least of the club's worries,
though. The taxman and Social Security were on the club's tail for payment of over 5 million euros owed.
In August 2008, the tax authorities seized the Bessa and put it up for public auction at 29 million euros. Boavista managed to secure a PEC (Extra-judicial Conciliation Procedure) with IAPMEI (Institute for the
Support of Small and Medium-sized Companies and Investment), a get-out involving the promise to pay debts over time, which gave the club the chance to circumvent the seizure and to be able to register to compete in
the professional leagues last season.
As if the financial problems were not enough, however, Boavista was dealt a massive blow by the Apito Dourado (Golden Whistle) ref-bribing case. An off-shoot of the criminal action going through the courts, Apito Final (brought by the Liga de Clubes)
found Boavista guilty of influencing referees in the 2003/04 season and banished the club to the Liga de Honra (second tier).
Cash flow dried up: television money and revenue from sponsorship and advertising all shrank in the lower division, and gates were miniscule. Greenhorns from the youth teams were drafted in, veterans with dodgy knees
also. They were paid only intermittently. It was a recipe for failure, and fail they did; the team finished second from bottom and were relegated.
Then in June of this year, the Liga de Clubes seemed to be offering a lifeline. The Apito Final process that had relegated Boavista found Vizela and Gondomar also guilty of corruption, dating back to 2002/03. Gondomar had finished bottom of the Liga de Honra, but Boavista could take Vizela's place.
Could but won't. The PEC established in 2008 was terminated at the end of June, leaving Boavista with no alternative but to accept its fate: the club will play its football in the non-professional Segunda Divisão (third tier) next season.
Who is to blame for the fall from the top of the tree to the roots in just eight years? All fingers are pointed at the Loureiro mini-dynasty: local businessman and politician Valentim Loureiro and his son João, the
vocalist with 80s pop-rock group Ban, now a lawyer. Valentim was president of the club from 1972 until handing over the reins to João in the mid-90s. João stood down in 2007.
Valentim (O Major) was directly involved in the charges of corruption that led to Boavista's relegation in 2008, while João can be blamed, at the very least, for incompetent management during his
time at the helm. For example, an audit carried out at the club in 2008 showed up a deal in which the club had sold space in the stadium to a company for 4 million euros. On the same day, the company sold the space
on to a chain of gyms for 13 million. Current club president Álvaro Braga Júnior admits that the club's debts total between 75 and 80 million euros.
Fears are that Boavista will go the way of Porto neighbours Salgueiros, whose senior football team was extinguished under similar circumstances in 2005. Salgueiros has been re-born in the form of Sport Clube
Salgueiros 08 (with a badge depicting a phoenix rising from the ashes), but it has had to start from scratch in the Porto district leagues.
The question is: can The Panthers also drag themselves out of the ashes?
12/02/09
(A version of this article appeared in the March 2009 edition of the British football magazine When Saturday Comes)
In advance of the Big Prize, the Portuguese media were convinced pretty much across the board that Cristiano Ronaldo had his name on the FIFA Player of the Year award. Just for good measure though, sports daily A Bola felt a little push might help and organised an on-line petition, signed by 123,559 people, which was sent to each of the 207 football associations of the voting countries. "Cristiano Ronaldo in Zürich to be crowned the best in the world" chanced the same paper on the day of the ceremony.
But sure enough, that night came the announcement of the inevitable from the rheumy-eyed former Rei Pelé ("THE NEW KING IS OURS" ran A Bola's front page banner headline the next day). It was a little
incongruous that this blushing, nervous young man (among all the dedications to his mother, his sisters, his friends, his team-mates, he forgot to mention his brother), normally so flamboyant on and off the pitch,
seemed so humbled by the occasion and the award, but it was refreshing that he accepted it in Portuguese; Luís Figo, the only other Portuguese winner, in 2001 and then at Real Madrid, had controversially used
Spanish, most likely due to marketing pressure, although he has never admitted as much.
There was, of course, a lot of (sometimes tortuous) hyperbole gushing out of the press the day after. A second sports daily, O Jogo, pulled out all the stops: "This is the corollary of a unique season … as if
the FIFA award were just the small step needed to put Cristiano Ronaldo on a level that Humanity has never before reached." Elsewhere, every drop was being squeezed out of the triumph. "More votes than Messi and
Torres put together!" boasted the other national sports paper, Record. Free newspaper Meia Hora reminded us that only two countries (Brazil and France) had won the award more times than Portugal, and that in the 18 editions to date, only Liberia (George Weah) had fewer registered players.
But in some newspaper columns and on discussion boards there were enough dissenting voices to take a bit of the shine off, dissent fuelled by Cristiano Ronaldo's indifferent second half of the year, however
irrelevant this was to the actual voting for the award. A football-loving work colleague admitted that she was prouder at the prospect of Obama choosing a Portuguese breed – Cão de Água – as the Whitehouse dog than of Cristiano Ronaldo's accolade.
On the night of the ceremony, Portugal's equivalent of the BBC's 'Question Time' (Prós e Contras – 'For and Against') devoted a special edition to the star and set out to identify the things that have made him so successful. In what eventually became more of a Prós e Prós,
the guests on the show, including politicians, psychologists and coaches, came up with a veritable litany of key elements: work, professionalism, dedication, determination, commitment, ambition, simplicity,
humility, innate talent, and the sheer pleasure he derives from what he does.
Then unexpectedly, there was the man himself, on the phone from Manchester. "I've just got in and turned on the TV and I thought I'd call", he told the delighted assembly. Cristiano Ronaldo is not the best of
speakers – his mangling of the Portuguese language is notorious – but he did raise a few laughs in what was becoming an overly earnest evening. The presenter suggested he had dropped his head in relief when he heard
Pelé say his name. "No, I was just checking my flies," he giggled. Asked if there had been champagne on the private jet (EUR 1,240/hr to hire, according to glossy magazine Lux) taking him back to Manchester, he was a little cryptic: "Yeah … everything."
After a while he excused himself "because I've got to be up early for training" (work, professionalism, dedication, etc.) and we were back to the guests. CR's first tutor at Sporting, Paulo Cardoso, described how the
11-year-old would cry every night for Madeira and his family, especially his mother Dona Dolores, but how his determination to succeed, even at that tender age, saw him through. In O Jogo, he told the
kids of Portugal: "Be ambitious and fight for your dreams. Always believe, because everything's possible in life."
Within a day or two of the award the tabloid Correio da Manhã reminded us of the things that young Portuguese men and boys might really aspire to in Cristiano Ronaldo's life, apart from winning honours: "Mysterious blonde gets into Ronaldo's Bentley" was the story.
12/02/09
(A version of this article appeared in the February 2009 edition of the British football magazine When Saturday Comes)
Despite a series of nearly-got-theres during five years as Portugal coach, by the summer of 2008 Luíz Felipe Scolari had overstayed his welcome and wanted out to lusher pastures. Perhaps seduced by his two successive
World Cup wins at U-20 level (1989 and 91) and by his association with Manchester United's successes in recent years, but apparently ignoring his indifferent previous spell as national coach (10 wins from 23 games
between 1991 and 93), the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) put their faith in the Mozambican-born Carlos Queirós, at the time a popular choice.
It has taken a matter of months for the initial optimism to crumble into bleak scepticism. A meaningless 5-0 hammering of the Faroe Islands in Queirós' first game, a friendly, was followed by a similar exercise
against World Cup Group 1 whipping boys Malta (4-0). In the next game, Portugal collapsed in the last five minutes to lose 2-3 at home to Denmark. A commendable 0-0 draw in Sweden followed, but then came two
disastrous results.
Portugal were 10th in the FIFA rankings when they received Albania (98th) on an October evening in Braga. A Faroe Islands/Malta-style goleada was surely on the cards, but no. A limited but organised Albania side, down to ten men for 50 minutes of the game, were more than a match for a disjointed, individualistic Portugal and the game finished goal-less ("Not zero-zero, less than zero", complained sports daily A
Bola).
Eight minutes from the end, FPF president Gilberto Madaíl was seen to leave his seat "for physiological reasons … and others". Cristiano Ronaldo, who had tried but failed throughout to settle the game
single-handedly, got stroppy with an understandably impatient crowd. And neither he as captain nor the coach turned up for the post-match flash interview. Queirós claimed that he'd got lost in the lifts of the Axa
Stadium after first having words with the players, but it all sounded a bit convenient and smacked not a little of cowardice.
Eventually he would tell the press: "We're constructing a team and we're not going to put that objective in doubt. With patience we'll get there." There were two problems with this: firstly, the Portuguese are not
very good at patience, and qualification for South Africa is not a long-term project; secondly, against Albania the team looked more like one under de-construction. The next game would lend weight to this idea.
Queirós considered that the November trip to Brazil would be "A great opportunity to motivate and stimulate the players" and "a great day for football, a great event, with all the significance it holds
both culturally and socially". As a motivational exercise, the 2-6 drubbing, Portugal's worst result for 53 years, was straight out of 'The Office', while the most significant cultural effect that the performance
and result had had, according to columnist Leonor Pinhão, writing in A Bola, was to provide Brazilians with more ammunition for making up Irish-style jokes about the Portuguese.
"For a leader, it's important to know who remains firm when the bridge starts shaking," Queirós had said before the game. But a camera rarely lies, and as the goals flew in, it continually picked up O Professor on the bench, running his hands through his thinning hair in impotent frustration. The sight begged a very unfavourable comparison between Queirós and his predecessor, Scolari.
The Brazilian's brashness had not always been a popular trait but had been effective in instilling discipline and urgency in the players of the newly named Clube Portugal. Despite being an outsider,
he had also managed to get the whole country behind the team with his projected nationalism.
This is not, however, the style of analytical, softly spoken, low-profile Queirós. "Those who know me know I'm not one for bombastic statements", he said after the Faroe Islands game, when asked why he didn't try to
pump up support for the side. "I prefer not to make promises. I want to talk less and do more."
So far he's certainly done less than Scolari. And as for promises, well, there's one he has made: "The Selecção will get the points needed for World Cup qualification, in whatever stadium and against whatever opposition".
Queirós has three months respite from criticism before that promise is put to the test against Sweden. But few here now believe it's a promise that can be kept by a team that has rapidly gone from being universally
feared to being perceived as a bit of a soft touch.
|
