A look back at the most shocking things to happen in football since the start of the decade
Join us as we take an intriguing journey back in time to explore some of the most surreal and unexpected moments of the decade relating to Portuguese football?
With the decade fast approaching its end, it got us thinking: just what are the most ridiculous things that have happened in Portuguese football over the last 10 years?
Which moments from the past decade would have been deemed nearly impossible back in the pre-2010 days but actually went on to happen?
Here we look to answer that question, collating some of the most absurd and extraordinary news stories of the last 10 years, compiling them into one simple list for your delectation. And after the decade we’ve just had, where do you even begin?
Benfica selling a teenager for 126 million euros…
Yes, we’re starting very recent indeed - but it’s a strong candidate for the most impressive and outlandish thing to have happened this decade, without doubt.
Just let that sink in. Benfica’s previous record sale in the pre-2010 era was Simao - who coincidentally left for Atletico Madrid for £18million. Significant money back then, a drop in the water in a chaotic market in today’s game.
Fast-forward just 10 years, and Benfica have sold a 19-year old player with less than a year’s experience to his name for well over 100 million euros. It was shocking at the time, and it is difficult to sum up just how shocking it would have sounded at the start of the decade. Football’s come a long way.
Jose Mourinho returning to Chelsea, before then becoming manager of Manchester United - and then joining Tottenham Hotspur
Another pretty recent development, at least the final third of the statement, but undoubtedly an incredibly unexpected and quite astonishing career pathway for Portugal’s most decorated manager.
His return to Chelsea was not a great surprise - few were shocked about it at the time, and at the start of the decade, many may have even predicted it would happen.
That he then went on to manage both Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, though, would have likely been deemed ridiculous - and yet here we are.
Who knows where Mourinho will have managed by the time we reach the end of the next decade - Arsenal and Liverpool, anyone?!
Jorge Jesus moving from Benfica to Sporting
Jumping a little further back in time, many refused to believe that Jorge Jesus’ decision to join Sporting CP would actually come to fruition in 2015 - having been managing their arch-rivals for Benfica for the past 6 years.
That’s what would have made this move - and, indeed, what did make this move - just so shocking. After 6 highly successful seasons with Benfica, winning 3 league titles and 6 domestic cups, as well as guiding Benfica to 2 Europa League finals, Jesus made the move to Sporting CP.
It would have been unpalatable at the start of the decade, it was rather unpalatable at the time, and the relationship between the fans and Jesus would have been very different had they known what he was going to do halfway through the century.
Sporting still haven’t won a Primeira Liga title
This one’s a bit cruel for all the Sporting fans reading this, though it is quite a surprising turn of events.
Having not won a league title since 2002 in a league that is exclusively dominated by just three sides, to go an entire decade without getting their hands on the biggest prize Portuguese football has to offer, although not unprecedented, is at the very least noteworthy.
Their longest Primeira Liga trophy drought is 18 years - when they didn’t win a single league title between their title triumphs in 1982 and 2000.
Coincidentally, Sporting have now entered their eighteenth season without a league trophy. With Sporting currently 13 points behind Benfica in the league standings, it seems certain that Sporting CP are going to make all the wrong type of history.
Benfica winning a league game 10-0
Thrashings are common in the Portuguese game - as you would expected when three teams dominate financially and competitively as extensively as Benfica, Porto and Sporting do.
It is not remotely uncommon to see one of them hit 4 or 5 goals against their opponents, perhaps even 6 or 7 on a very good day.
However, no team had been subjected to a 10-goal hammering since 1964 - and football, as we know, has changed a lot since then.
That is 55 years of football where no team in the Portuguese top flight has scored 10 goals in a single game - which is why Benfica 10-0 Nacional on 10th February 2019 will go down as an historic day. When will any Portuguese side manage that in the nation’s top flight again?
Pacos Ferreira finishing 3rd in the Primeira Liga
It is incredibly difficult for any Portuguese side to break into the top 3 in the Primeira Liga. Rarely does a team do it successfully.
Vitoria Guimaraes have done it a couple of time over the past couple of decades, as have Boavista. But there was something particularly unbelievable about Pacos Ferreria doing so in 2013.
In the second to last season of the last decade (2007-08), Pacos finished 15th in the table - the league back then only had 16 teams, meaning that in any other year, Pacos would have been relegated.
Their Primeira Liga status was salvaged, however, because 9th-placed Boavista was relegated instead as a result of the bribery scandal.
Who’d have thought, therefore, that they’d go on to finish 3rd in the league - and qualify for the Champions League play-off rounds - just 5 seasons later? An extraordinary achievement.
Porto’s manager (Nuno Espirito Santo) joining a team playing in the second division of English football (Wolves)
It led to more than a few raised eyebrows at the time - and that was when many people already knew about Wolves’ impressive connection to Portuguese superagent Jorge Mendes - so at the beginning of the decade, there’s no way anyone would have believed it.
Having seen Jose Mourinho go to one of the Premier League’s finest in Chelsea after his Champions League triumph in 2004, the stock of whoever was in the Porto hotseat was high.
Even Victor Fernandez, whose brief 5 month stint as head coach of Porto was far from successful, went on to join midtable La Liga outfit Zaragoza directly after his reign at Porto, while Co Adriaanse moved to Metalurh Donetsk when his 1 year journey at Porto came to an end.
Metalurh Donetsk may not sound like much to many readers - which, in many way, is understandable, as they are a club that ceased to exist in 2015 - but they actually finished in the top 5 of the Ukrainian top flight every year between 2000 and 2005, including three 3rd place finishes, so were a side playing at a very respectable standard at the time.
To therefore see a Porto manager leave to go to a team not even playing in the top flight of a country’s footballing pyramid would have been seen as a huge shock - particularly at the end of the last decade. Fast forward 3 years though, and they’re in the Premier League, competing in the Europa League, and boasting a squad containing both Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio - which in itself could be deemed a shocking occurance in its own right.
Cristiano Ronaldo joining Juventus for 105 million euros - at the age of 33
Ronaldo’s move to Real Madrid in 2009 was by no means a surprise, and neither was the fact that it smashed the world record fee paid for a player, the Spanish club willing to fork out over 80 million pounds to secure his signature, way more than the previous world record fee of £46.6million Madrid paid for Zinedine Zidane.
However, if you told people at the start of the decade that Ronaldo would, eight years later - at the age of 33 and 5 months - end up costing even more, breaking the 100 million euro barrier, you surely wouldn’t have believed it.
It is testament to his discipline and fitness that such extraordinary longevity is possible and a club are willing to pay 100 million pounds for a player well over the age of 30.
Three Portuguese teams to reach the Europa League semi-final
This one happened right at the start of the decade, in the 2010-11 season, and Portuguese teams have never even come close to replicating this quite extraordinary feat.
Although it happened just one year after the end of the last decade, people still would have struggled to believe that all of Benfica, Porto and Braga would reach the last four of Europe’s secondary competition, with Vilarreal the other team to reach this stage of the competition to make it an entirely Iberian semi-final.
It was a display of Portuguese dominance on the European stage very few would have foreseen. Braga beat stellar sides such as Liverpool and Dynamo Kiev to reach the final four, Benfica triumphed over PSG and PSV, while Porto were handed a favourable route to the final, drawing PAOK, CSKA and Spartak Moscow.
It required both luck and ability to allow it to happen, and it wil surely never happen again. Luckily, the Portuguese sides took full advantage, Porto defeating Vilarreal and Braga surprisingly overcoming Benfica over two legs to set up an all-Portuguese final. Porto went on to lift the trophy, and the 2010-11 remains Portugal’s most impressive season in European football in living memory, at least as a collective.
Porto winning the league undefeated - and the Europa League - with a 33-year old manager
Following on from that previous moment, FC Porto not only won the Europa League in 2010-11, but they also won the Primeira Liga - and not only won it, but won it without losing a single game.
On only one other occasion had Porto ever gone an entire league season undefeated - and no side in Portugal has been able to do it since.
Porto finished their league campaign with 27 wins and 3 draws, losing none of their 30 games as they won the Primeira Liga by 21 points, conceding just 16 goals in the campaign.
If that wasn’t enough, Porto also won the Portuguese Cup that year, completing a famous treble.
However, what made this achievement even more spectacular is that their manager, Andre Vilas Boas, was entering just his 2nd year of football management, and was just 33 years of age - the same age that Cristiano Ronaldo made his big-money move to Juventus.
It made him the youngest manager since 1962 to win the Primeira Liga, and the youngest manager in the history of football to win a European competition. He went on to join Chelsea at the end of the season.
Portugal becoming double European champions
And from the start of the century, we jump to the end. We couldn’t leave this one out, could we? What a way to end.
Portugal, perhaps the most successful side to have never won an international trophy, broke that record in great style by winning not just one, but two titles towards the end of the decade.
It’s not the biggest of shocks, particularly for fans of Portuguese football, who have been watching the beautiful game year upon year patiently waiting for the inevitable moment they end their trophy drought, but to win both Euro 2016 and the UEFA Nations League in 2019 is an impressive achievement that round off this list in style.
Jorge Jesus. Photo author: Вячеслав Евдокимов. License link.
