footballportugal

other weeks

footballportugal

liga
fixtures/results

videos

**********
podcast
**********

30/05/06

1 – As you must have noticed, I like football very much. I like the game, its logic and strategy, which combine teamwork with individual talent, the human qualities that football may form for life. I like the passion, the club partisanship, the colours, the exceptional players. And I like the spectacle surrounding the game: the stadiums, the floodlights, the pitch, the aesthetics, the choreography, the sounds and the atmosphere. It's just a shame that the modern Portuguese stadiums did away with those fantastic caravans selling pork and pork-skin sandwiches, wine and draught beer, to be replaced by those, stupid, aseptic bars inspired by that sinister invention: McDonalds and the like.

But in my opinion, football is only that: a great game, a magnificent sport, and sometimes a dazzling spectacle. And nothing more. It isn't, and will never be, compensation for frustrations outside the game, a source of patriotic inspiration or a reason for national redemption. I already loved football when the New State [the regime that ruled the country in the middle of the 20th century] used football to distract us from the political and cultural misery in which we lived, trying to make us believe that because we had that fabulous team of Eusébio et al of '66, we must have been a great country. I will not, then, be hanging the national flag out of the window of my house or my car, nor will I be joining in with idiotic manifestations of ad hoc patriotism, on the orders of a Brazilian coach [Scolari} who has convinced himself that he has to make us all patriotic subjects to the Selecção bandwagon. […].

As I've learned to see things, patriotism is not hanging flags from your windows when there's a European Championship or a World Cup. For me, patriotism is paying your taxes, being useful to the community in some way, or serving your country, when there's a need for it and without expecting anything in return. And national heroes are not the players of the Selecção, who were born with the talent to play football and therefore have the honour and the privilege (excellently rewarded, directly or indirectly, through publicity and image rights) of representing Portugal in a World Cup. I prefer to think of heroes as being amateurs who prepare themselves for years on end and at their own expense, far from crowds and stardom, to represent Portugal at the Olympic Games. And forgive me the blasphemy, but as a Portuguese, I'm infinitely more proud of Maria João Pires [classical pianist] than Cristiano Ronaldo and of António Damásio [doctor and scientist] than Luís Figo. Each one of us is free to define his notion of fatherland and national heroes. This is mine.

2 – Meanwhile, the summer of the Selecções began with the U-21's failure [in the European Championship in Portugal]. Between you and me, in the cold light of day, and despite the brilliant qualifying campaign, I don't think we can speak of disappointment. From what I saw of the U-21s, it seemed to me that the team was merely reasonable and clearly weaker than France and Serbia-Montenegro, who defeated us with no room for complaints. Apart from anything else, it seemed to me that there was one and only one strategy to try and score goals and win games: for Quaresma to cross from the left with the outside of his right foot, aiming for Hugo Almeida's head. This became particularly evident when the coach Agostinho Oliveira tried to explain away the fiasco by citing Quaresma's limited productivity. Apart from being unfair, the observation is not true: if, against France, Quaresma was certainly tired and not as good as normal, against Serbia-Montenegro, he put in three crosses that should have been goals, all wasted, and Portugal's tow most dangerous shots, and against Germany, he was one of the players who put in the most effort. If a coach makes good results depend on the moments of brilliance of one or two players it's because he doesn't know how to add value to the team himself.

3 – While the U-21s said goodbye to the European Championship in Guimarães, the Seniors began to show the result of their preparation in Évora. It causes not a little perplexity to note that, while our group rivals in Germany chose preparation games with a high degree of difficulty (Iran against Croatia, Angola against Argentina and Mexico against France), Portugal opted for two preparation games against two national teams that are not even in the top 100 in the world: Cape Verde and Luxembourg. But after seeing the opening shot against the, let's say, invented Selecção of Cape Verde, Scolari's choice seems very prudent. I ask myself whether, with the state of preparation revealed (with the exception of Pauleta), our World Cup squad would have done any better than our U-21s against the French and Serbian U-21s ... As it is, playing against teams that guarantee little expenditure of energy and guaranteed victory, at least the troops' morale remains solid, and two victories are added to Luiz Felipe Scolari's CV. Later, in Germany, we'll see if the strategy was a good choice.

4 – Watching the game in Évora [versus Cape Verde], another thing that struck em as strange was the very decision to play the game and base the Selecção's training camp in Évora. I have no objection whatsoever, in fact quite the opposite, I think it's praiseworthy that whenever possible, the Selecção train in the interior, especially in the Alentejo, where it's so rare to see top class football. But we're at the end of May, beginning of June, when in Évora it's common to have temperatures like those of Saturday, 35 degrees in the shade. Won't this have negative repercussions for the physical preparation of the team? The French, for example, started by training in the cold of the Alps, at altitude, while we chose the sweltering Alentejano plain – could it be that we got it right, despite knowing that in Germany we won't find temperatures like that? I don't know. I only know that at the end of the game against Cape Verde, the players admitted that they were very tired, and the assistant coach was sleeping on the bench next to Scolari, won over by the heat (or was it the lack of heat in the game?).

But the choice of Évora for the training camp also raised another question, one to do with the taxpayer: with so many places available — Óbidos, Vale do Lobo (where the English squad trained), any place in the Algarve near the useless Estádio do Algarve, Coimbra and many other venues around the country that are ready and available, including Sporting, FC Porto and Benfica's training centres — was it really necessary to go to a place where it was necessary to build a mini-stadium from scratch? Yes, I know that the new Estádio de Évora was financed privately. But the rumour is that it wasn't a gesture by benefactors but rather an exchange of business opportunities: they built the stadium and, in exchange, they're going to be able to build within Évora's historic area, neglecting the respective Master Urban Plan. I really hope that this is not the case, because it would be terrible if the presence of the Selecção was the cause of and pretext for decisions of this type against the public interest.

5 – I notice once again that Cristiano Ronaldo sometimes has attacks of stardom that he should really be getting over by now. That kicking of an opponent [in the game against Cape Verde] would have got him a red card in England and could have meant, if the referee had not been so lenient, that he would miss Portugal's first game in the World Cup. Scolari did well to take him off immediately, but now he'll have to explain to him that talent for playing football and star status do not render unnecessary other obligations. Especially when you're representing your country.

(coutesy Miguel Sousa Tavares)

16/05/06

1 A warning first: what I'm going to write does not involve any disrespect, either personal or professional, for Luiz Felipe Scolari. Personally, I have no reason to disrespect him, and nor is it my habit to confuse things, and obviously professionally, I don't even question, not even as a joke, that his knowledge of football is far greater than mine. My criticism of the national team coach has exclusively to do with his behaviour as the leader of a group and a group whose prime mission is to represent an entire country — and not just a part of it.

Let's be frank: we've known or suspected for ages that Scolari would leave Ricardo Quaresma out of the squad for the World Cup. I wrote just that in November or December, when I heard the coach say that of the 23 for Germany he already had 20 in mind. And I had no doubt that wasn't one of them, whatever season he had. Because his exclusion is entirely in line with what some call Scolari's coherence and others could call his stubbornness: the difference between the two is not a question of fact but of opinion. From that moment on I kept quiet because I also knew that Scolari's chronic need to affirm his authority means that the more a player is wanted, by everyone, the greater the chance is of Scolari excluding him. And if I wanted to see Quaresma at the World Cup it isn't because he's an FC Porto player (I also wanted to see Tonel [Sporting] and Manuel Fernandes [Benfica] there ...), and nor is it because I think that with him the Selecção would be stronger. The main reason I kept quiet, so as not to spoil the chances of Ricardo Quaresma being called up, is this: because he's an extraordinary player, he had a season in which he was unanimously recognised as the best player in the championship and he deserved, without a shadow of a doubt, to be in Germany. Unfortunately, he had the bad luck to be up against a coach like Scolari, for whom justice and merit are the least of the selection criteria, and so he will have to wait at least four years to be able to fulfil that dream. Players like Pelé, Maradona, Owen and Ronaldo were lucky not to have Scolari as their national coach: this meant that they were all able to play in World Cups at around 20 years of age or younger, and it meant that we who like great players got to see them sooner.

If Scolari is not taking Ricardo Quaresma to Germany — like Manuel Fernandes or João Moutinho [Sporting] — it's for a simple reason: it's because he's intellectually idle. He detests innovation, he detests being confronted with new challenges, he detests having to change the plans he's thought out and defined. He defined his team when he got here four years ago, and since then he's only altered it here and there when it was the players themselves that gave up. The squad he announced last week is suffocatingly predictable and monotonous. Not only is there not a single novelty, but he calls up again all those who have a fixed place — including substitutes in their respective clubs, players whose form he is unaware of and who he hasn't seen play for months, and even those who haven't played for a long time. When you're lucky enough to be selected by Scolari, there's only one way to leave the Selecção, and that's by hanging up your boots.

I understand, of course, that a coach might prefer to use players he knows well and that from a homogeneous group. But no winning team can limit itself to that choice, not allowing for renovation with new talent in favour of something that is more like a group of friends or the coach's family. When he announced six months in advance that he already knew were 20 of the 23 that would be going to Germany, Scolari transmitted a clear double message: New stars could arrive on the scene and he wouldn't call them up; and those selected could be out of form or just not playing and they would always have a place in his team. A team like that is not a team of the best but of the faithful, and a Selecção like that is not the Selecção de todos nós [the Team of All of Us], but the coach's team.

Of course, those who defend Scolari (some of whom, with no effort to hide their anxiety to get rid of Ronald Koeman from Benfica, now consider it a crime to criticise the National Team Coach), can always argue that his results speak for themselves. It's the old story of the glass being half full or half empty. You could say that Scolari is the man who took us to the title of European runners-up and got us through to the World Cup Finals with ease – it's one possible conclusion. The other is that he's one of the luckiest men in Portuguese football (the other is his protégé Ricardo, who must be the goalkeeper that misses the most crosses yet concedes the fewest goals). In this other way of weighing up Scolari's achievements, he was lucky not to have to qualify for the European Championship, instead of that being able to spend two years playing meaningless friendlies, losing all the games against teams that had qualified and totting up catastrophic exhibitions and results; he lost the first game of Euro 2004 against Greece and only then, wobbling on the precipice, admitted he had been wrong and fielded FC Porto's defence and midfield, who had just been crowned European Champions and only he thought should not be first choice (remember that in 2004, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Maniche and Deco were substitutes in Scolari's team!); then he was lucky (?), in the game that we absolutely had to win, that Ovchinikov was wrongly sent off, leaving us to play against ten men for a whole quarter; he was lucky in the penalties against England, and lucky to come up against such a weak team as Greece in the Final, but even then, he showed that he hadn't learned anything from the defeat in the first game and repeated the result; and, after having lost a European Championship played at home and with everything in his favour, he was lucky to get a qualifying group for the World Cup that it was virtually impossible not to qualify from; and, last but not least, we've got a group in Germany with one accessible team, Mexico, and two beginners, Iran and Angola, the latter made up of players from the Portuguese second and third divisions.

Here too, once again, an evaluation of Luiz Felipe Scolari's CV in charge of the Selecção is more a question of opinion than fact. The same can't be said of Ricardo Quaresma's football, where facts and opinions coincide. There's just one person in the whole of Portugal that thinks that Quaresma shouldn't be at the World Cup. Unfortunately, for him and for us, that person is the National Team Coach. He's going to have to prove that he's right, and no excuses, like wanting to convince us from the outset that we'll have "serious difficulties" to qualify from our group.

2 Hélio, Vitória de Setúbal's coach, looked disconsolate after the Taça Final, while Co Adriaanse looked exuberant. Neither was right to feel as they did. With regard to the Setúbal coach, a lucky shot against the bar is not enough to morally justify any result other than defeat when they didn't show the slightest bit of courage and will to fight for anything else. As for the Porto coach, yet another narrow 1-0 win and another demonstration of being allergic to goals is not enough to talk about attacking football and to celebrate a mundane and practically obligatory victory as if it were a great conquest.

(coutesy Miguel Sousa Tavares)

09/05/06

The Championship ended with various winners: sporting were 'champions of injustice', as they always are when they don't manage to be champions on the pitch; Benfica were 'champions of credibility', in the words of the club's president; but FC Porto, if you don't mind, were the actual and rightful Champions.

Because I wrote here a few weeks back that in all good faith it was natural that FC Porto had been Champions and that they had done it on indisputable merit, that up until they had clinched the title nothing, not a single point, was down to favours from refereeing, I had to put up with a welter of personal abuse — some public, other private — full of resentment, envy and stupidity. ... I know there'll always be people like this, but even so, the ease with which football brings out the worst in people makes you wonder.

On Sunday, summing up the championship, Paulo Bento [Sporting's coach] — just as he had done after the decisive Sporting v FC Porto game — showed again that it's possible to have a different attitude. He said that "at the end of championships, teams always finish in the place they deserve", and that as for Sporting, "they lacked a little more capacity to get to the title. It's what everyone saw and everyone, objectively, thinks. Everyone, no: almost everyone. Sá Pinto, for example, pondering whether to quit football or not, certainly frustrated at going out with a whimper, with two sending-offs in a row, said as he left the Estádio de Alvalade that, in his opinion, "Sporting deserved to go one better, but they weren't allowed to". I've praised Sá Pinto on various occasions here — last year, for example, I wrote that just because of him and Liedson, Sporting deserved to be Champions. Therefore, I'm in a position to say now that I think his statements are unacceptable, especially from someone like him who, by birth, education and accumulated experience, cannot be like those players who say the first nonsense that comes into their heads. Of course, Ricardo Sá Pinto has every right to think that Sporting deserved to be Champions this season — it's a minority view, but legitimate. What he doesn't have the right to do is to come with these tired insinuations about the legitimacy of titles won by others. In the case in point, not only do these insinuations offend intellectual truth and honesty, but they also offend his professional colleagues at FC Porto who, in Alvalade and throughout the season, showed why they deserved to be Champions and above insinuations like these.

The same could be said of the second place secured by Sporting at the expense of Benfica: no one in all good faith could contest the justice of it. And, unfortunately for Ronald Koeman, his insinuation that the Rio Ave players facilitated Sporting's victory in the last but one game collapsed with [Sporting 'keeper] Ricardo's unthinkable 'frango' ['chicken' – bad goalkeeping mistake] in that game, along with [Benfica 'keeper] Moretto's unthinkable 'frango' in Paços de Ferreira and Benfica's lamentable exhibition. On the last day, not only did Benfica reveal the justice of their not coming second but also ended up being indirectly decisive in the relegation of Lisbon neighbours Belenenses. One of football's little ironies.

At the bottom, as expected, it was drama right up until the end. José Couceiro [Belenenses coach] raised suspicions as an explanation for the disaster. And while it's true that on Sunday Belenenses could complain about an inexistent penalty in Coimbra [Académica 2-2 Marítimo] that saved Académica and condemned Belenenses, it's also true that in Barcelos [Gil Vicente 1-0 Belenenses] they couldn't even get the draw that would have saved them. In the last third of the championship, while teams that looked condemned, like Gil Vicente, Paços de Ferreira and Naval, did all they could to survive, others, like Vitória de Guimarães and Belenenses, never showed the capacity to avoid the abyss. And while in the case of Guimarães it was a death foretold because of the consistent lack of class shown, in the case of Belenenses it was an unexpected, sliding death, the imminence of which the team only appeared to see when it was too late to react.

So that, all things considered — at the end of the day, as it should be — I think that the eternal question of justice ended up resolved, both at the top and the bottom, quite naturally and logically. What we have are long distance runners and relay racers, professionals the year round and others that appear only briefly. There are players who have a good game and straight away start crowing, imagining themselves on the way to Real Madrid or Juventus. There are teams that start out well, get two or three wins right at the beginning and then announce that "this year, only external factors can stop us from achieving our objectives". And there are, inevitably, coaches and directors who, at the first refereeing mistake, think they're victims and come out in a campaign against the 'system' and, the following Sunday, when it happens that decisions go their way, they're very quiet, hoping no one will notice. But there you go, we're used to it, year in, year out. Their features of our game – there's nothing we can do about it now.

But it would be useful, in my opinion, to reflect upon the fact that this Championship was badly played, with very few games of a true European level — and that after last year, which was one of the poorest Championships that I can remembers. Essentially what we saw were teams defending throughout, very few goals scored and a great part of them from dead ball situations, games full of fouls, constant protests about the refereeing, public without an ounce of impartiality and demanding nothing of their own teams, and the directors' habitual 'vanity fair', prolonging games into the week with their always extremely important and profound statements. Now we go into the other two Championships, which arouse such passion and prose: that of transfers and that of the struggle for power in the Liga de Clubes. The latter is already under way, in fact, with the first candidature on the table: that of Rui Alves, president of Nacional. To do once and for all for any attempt to take our football seriously.

(coutesy Miguel Sousa Tavares)