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31/01/06
1 - Unfortunately, the vandals that the FC Porto administration is talking about do exist [see story].
They exist in all areas, they exist in football and they exist in all clubs. They may attack in Touriz or Vila do Conde [home of Rio Ave, Porto's opponents last Sunday], with knives or with stones. What makes them
particularly noticed in football is that football moves crowds, and crowds are cowardly and primitive. There are fewer and fewer people who, however deep their passion for their club, do not give in to hatred,
stupidity or vulgarity. Fewer and fewer who prefer spectacle to result, pitch to behind the scenes shenanigans, their club honoured to their club as victor.
Those who assaulted Co Adriaanse [on Sunday] are among those that should be banned forever from football - or whatever they imagine football to be. Apart from anything else, they have brought dishonour on FC Porto
and created an incident that weakens the feelings that the large majority of fans identify with today.
In a civilised and democratic society, made up of free men and not cowards, there is another way to
disagree or make your opinions known: it's to voice them calmly, without offence or insults, and then sign at the bottom.
2
- Co Adriaanse has become FC Porto's central problem, a divisive factor between the administration and fans, and the cause of a deaf and growing irritation that will end up keeping portistas away from the Estádio do Dragão.
Due to him and what came before him.
Less than a year and a half ago, FC Porto ended a 2003/04 season that was perhaps the best in the life of the club: European Champions, admired by the whole world, with a
spectacular new stadium, a financial situation which would have allowed it the unthought-of gesture of wiping out its debt and starting to gradually re-build a great team. If Pinto da Costa [president of the club]
had left then, he would have been entitled to a statue that would have made the late Kim Il-sung jealous. But he preferred to stay on, taking on the responsibility of finding a successor to Mourinho and proving that
the successes had not been exclusively down to the coach. A year and a half later, the outlook is devastating: he saw himself involved, and we'll see what happens, in the Apito Dourado process, he witnessed the incapacity of his club, the following season, to defend the European title with brio and even to win the easiest national title of the last few decades, and this year he has seen the team not even able to secure third place in the group stage of the Champions League. In the new stadium, where Mourinho had conceded only a draw to Coruña, he's seen FC Porto lose to Benfica, Sporting Braga, Boavista, Artmedia, etc., not forgetting the 0-4 to Nacional. We're into the fourth coach tried out and 30 new players contracted in two seasons, and logically, with a policy like that, and despite the many millions made from unrepeatable transfers, he's seen the accounts go back into the red and has today a team that cost more than the one that was European Champions. What's left that's positive? The team is top, four points clear. Yes, but ...
To start with, it's no great feat to be top of the Liga. The championship is all that's left after the indecently premature exit from Europe, for the first time in 12 years and with the resulting
financial losses. It's also the very least to expect from a club that has a budget for football that's 50% more than one of its direct rivals and 100% more than the other. And the lead has all the makings of being
provisional. They've drawn at home to Sporting and lost to Benfica - which will matter if it goes to the wire. And of the four trips to Lisbon, they lost the first [Estrela da Amadora] and the most difficult ones
are still to come. Finally, and above all, the club has the problem called Co Adriaanse; at this moment no one would bet a farthing on his capacity to take the team to the title and return to among the greats of
Europe.
At the beginning, I was enthusiastic about the football played by the team coached by Adriaanse: their play was spectacular, it was open, attacking, exciting. The only doubt I raised at the time was
whether the team would be able to maintain that rhythm throughout the season and if it would combine spectacle with results, seeing that the defence seemed to me to be really vulnerable. The rest were specific
doubts: whether Postiga was really a number 10 and whether there wasn't a better occupation for Quaresma than the subs' bench. But essentially I gave Adriaanse far more than the benefit of the doubt. My belief began
to waver after the defeats in the Champions League - against Rangers, Artmedia and Inter - a large share of responsibility going to the coach. And I changed camps completely when I saw the almost scientific way he
prepared the defeat against Benfica. After that, and like the majority of fans and all onlookers, I have merely commented on Adriaanse's total disorientation. Disorientation in the disastrous and disrespectful way
he's treated players that are symbols of the club and who should be essential to him in the management of the team; disorientation in the way that he insists, week after week, on players that have no place in the
first team, to then, with no warning whatsoever, forget about them completely; disorientation in the way that he drops, without any justification, players who have just had a great game and, on the other hand,
insists on others that no one can understand why they're there; disorientation in the preparation of the more complicated games, in which he never seems to know what to expect of the opponent; finally,
disorientation in the system to be played, which has jumped from 433 to 424 to 343 to 334. If there's a word to describe Adriaanse's erratic spell during the last seven months at the helm of FC Porto, it's that:
disorientation. No one knows where he's heading, no one knows if he knows where he's heading.
Meanwhile, the team that was European Champions has been completely dismantled (there's not a single player left
in the first team!), it's been transformed into a samba school with two Argentinians just for show, there's no style of play nor routine moves in attack or in dead ball situations (and training sessions are only
held behind closed doors!) and, however many forwards play or are tried out, it's all dependent upon the inspiration of Ricardo Quaresma to manage a goal here or there. As for the early season spectacle, well ...
that's just a memory.
So Pinto da Costa has a serious problem, aggravated by his bravado in extending Adriaanse's contract before he'd proved his worth. Now, to sack him and his assistants would cost something like two or three
million euros - as well as the public recognition that, for the fourth time in a row, he got it wrong. To not sack him is to look on while situations such as that of Jorge Costa and Vítor Baía unfold (and to try to
distract attention with ridiculous episodes of demeaning guerrilla warfare with José Veiga [Benfica's director of football]), to see up-and-coming talents being wasted, more and more players being contracted in the
vain hope of producing some semblance of a winning team, and to whistle in the wind to pretend that he doesn't see the white handkerchiefs that are rubbing away at the heart of the fans ... until, instead of
handkerchiefs, there will be more and more empty seats in the stands of the Dragão.
In Pinto da Costa's place, all things considered, I know what I would do: I'd sack him. Because it's clear that it's not worth waiting for a miracle. Co Adriaanse is simply not up to it.
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- Last weekend, the Luz [Benfica 1-3 Sporting] saw a chapter of the same story written: arrogance is only forgivable when it's based on merit that's recognised by all. Otherwise it's merely the vanity of those that think they're great (and I don't mean Ronald Koeman, a true gentleman, both in victory and defeat).
(courtesy of Miguel Sousa Tavares)
24/01/06
1
- The day before yesterday, just like millions of other Portuguese, I went to vote in the presidential elections. In the last 31 years, ever since we've had a democracy, I've never failed to vote. I've often voted blank (the most political and meaningful of votes) but I've never let others decide for me without my being consulted. That's my right and at the same time my duty. The way I see it, anyone who evades paying taxes and abstains in the elections doesn't have the right to complain about anything whatsoever. Democratic citizenship demands that you first fulfil your duties and only then claim your rights.
Apart from which, I like election days. I like that quiet happiness of the Portuguese in the streets, that sensation that it's a special day - our day, the day on which we're heard and everything is decided
in the open, on which each one's opinion counts for exactly the same as the next man's. I like that festival of democracy that you feel in the air, the families walking to the polling stations, the Sunday best, the
neighbours who meet up to vote and chat, when sometimes they don't chat for a whole year. I lived all my infancy and youth waiting for this, and no one is ever going to take it away from me. My 25th April.
Half seriously, half joking, I like to say that 25th April [1974, when the dictatorial regime was toppled in a bloodless revolution] only really happened when democracy also came to football, when, in 1978, FC Porto could finally be champions and put an end to the Benfica/Sporting oligopoly that had become a part of the habits and culture of the New State [the dictatorship] and the country. On that day, the footballing nation also became a democracy and opened up to a new frontier - Porto and the North - of which Boavista would also later become a part. I won't sit by and allow anyone to take that away from me ever again. And if I'm writing about this today, taking last Sunday's elections as a starting point, it's because I feel that there's a whiff of the olden days in the air, a subliminal plan to subvert the democratic rules of the game, to return to the peaceful times when the strongest ruled and the others obeyed. We find again a fog of arrogance and the corresponding subservience, an all-powerful body that tramples over the rules, claims the privileges of authority and demands from the others silence, fear and obedience. You know who I'm talking about; all the signs are there.
2 - People have been asking how a club like Académica could possibly be interested in loaning a player to Benfica. We've always seen the opposite - we've never seen a small club loan out a player to a Grande before. Let's try to understand this by looking a little more closely at a story that unfolded with great ceremony and silenced doubts.
Marcel was Académica's best player. In 15 games he'd scored nine of the team's 14 goals. I don't think Académica have scored again since he left. He cost Os Estudantes dear last July, and he had a rescission clause in his contract of 3.5 million euros. Two weeks before the game against Benfica, he stopped turning up at the club, with which he had a valid contract and apparently all salaries paid up and no reason for a dispute. The day after the Benfica game, for which he didn't show, he was presented at the Luz as Benfica's latest reinforcement, declaring that he'd been contacted "officially" by Benfica ... two weeks before, i.e. precisely at the time when he'd disappeared from Coimbra. Vitória de Setúbal's José Fonte had done something similar: he'd rescinded unilaterally with Vitória on the eve of the game against Benfica and appeared at the Luz, as a new reinforcement, on the day after the game. And both of them confessed to being Benfica fans since they were kids. Hmmm.
But the Marcel business is indeed curious. Académica were left without him, they had to look to the market for a replacement and they didn't see a penny from Benfica for their troubles. He was loaned out,
with an option to buy next July. This means that even if Benfica pay all of his salaries until July, Académica can only lose from the deal: either Benfica return him in July because they didn't like him, or they
take up the option, but certainly for less than the 3.5 million, because then both Benfica and the player will be in a good position (as they've already demonstrated) to force any discount they want. What have
Académica won? And if they drop into the Liga de Honra [second division] (as did Estoril last season after being forced to change venues [to the Algarve] for the Benfica game), how much will the Eagles' swoop have cost them?
Look at Vitória de Setúbal: they've already conceded as many goals in three games without Moretto as they had in 15 games with him. And they were forced to sell him so cheaply that the Benfica president
himself was moved to add a tip to the price paid (?). And the pathetic Chumbita [Nunes, president of Vitória] even did something never seen before, which was to take part in the ceremony to present the player to
Benfica's sócios. Now Vitória's only hope of viability is to hope that the Government approves an urbanisation project [for the Estádio do Bonfim] which is a public disgrace but which will save a club
that's broke because of management deals like this.
This weekend, at least, there was a change of methods. On the eve of the Gil Vicente game, Benfica didn't try to seduce or divert any of the opponent's
players (there weren't any worth it): this time they merely promised that after the game they'd loan Gil two players. What gentlemen.
3
- In Braga, when he saw that he'd lost, Nuno Gomes suggested with an explicit gesture [syringe to the arm] that the opponents had been doped. The whole country saw it on television and understood the message. In Figueira da Foz, against Naval, Co Adriaanse apparently shouted out "foul!" in some move or other. Nobody saw or heard it except the referee. Nuno Gomes got a 450-euro fine; Co Adriaanse got a two-game suspension. How they've missed McCarthy's elbows this year! Ever since he tucked in his elbows, have you noticed how there hasn't been a single elbowing incident in the Portuguese game? Everything's so saintly that even a bloke shouting out "foul!" is considered a serious offence ...
4 - But in the absence of Porto elbows, we have hands. An abundance of hands, belonging to Benfica's opponents. I commissioned a survey from Eurotest: in the last 30 Liga games (which takes in the latter part of last season), 90% of handballs or alleged handballs given in the area resulted in penalties going Benfica's way.
5
- The championship is in its decisive phase, when whoever breaks away now has every chance of not being caught. On Saturday we have Benfica v Sporting, Sunday Rio Ave v FC Porto. Well, it's at this precise moment that the FPF [Portuguese Football Federation] has put together an event called the Tagus Valley Tournament, in which Portugal's 'B' Team (something we didn't even know existed) is, between Wednesday and Friday, going to play some obscure national teams from the east. Called up for this extremely important tournament are four Sporting players, all of them habitual first-teamers, and five from FC Porto, among which the decisive Ricardo Quaresma. From Benfica ... not a single player. As the coach explained, Manuel Fernandes [Benfica], for example, "is physically debilitated, and I don't even know if I'll be able to count on him for the near future". Can this be the same Manuel Fernandes that played a whole game against Gil Vicente last Saturday?
What tournament will they invent in the week of the Benfica v FC Porto game - 'The Lisbon Ring-Road Tournament', or 'The Benfica - Champions Tournament'?
(courtesy of Miguel Sousa Tavares)
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