Performance, attendance, ingenuity: Portuguese football is failing
Portuguese football is in an unusual and concerning place; possessing four sides demonstrably displaying the proven quality required to compete with the continent’s best and in the UEFA Champions League, the higher reaches of the domestic game are undoubtedly in good health. The rest of the division, however, languishes considerably behind.
This has, of course, always been the case. The Portuguese top division, in its entire history, has only been won by 5 clubs - two of which, Belenenses and Boavista, have won it just once apiece. The other 87 titles have all gone to one of Benfica, Porto or Sporting. That level of dominance makes the Portuguese league entirely unique. But the gap between the traditional Big Three (and Braga) and the rest of the division is seemingly only widening with each passing season.
Merely weeks on from witnessing Vitoria Guimaraes crash out of the Europa Conference League at the hands of Celje of Slovenia and Arouca be eliminated by Norweigan outfit Brann, questions have yet again been raised about the overall standard of Portuguese football - and it is about time we accept the validity of those justified and pertinent queries.
It was not too long ago that we watched on in awe as Vitoria Guimaraes secured a mightily impressive victory over German heavyweights Eintracht Frankfurt and battled to an equally remarkable draw against iconic English side Arsenal in a single Europa League group stage campaign. Even more recently we witnessed Rio Ave take the prestigious AC Milan all the way to an epic and protruded penalty shootout in their bid to also qualify for Europe’s secondary club competition, while Pacos de Ferreira even beat Tottenham Hotspur - the Champions League finalists of 2019 - in their Conference League qualifier first leg just two years ago.
Things have seemingly changed considerably since then. In back-to-back seasons, Guimaraes have fallen in the early stages of qualifying in Europe, first to Hajduk Split in 2022 and then the aforemontioned Celje this year, neither of which are perennials in Europe and both were unseeded opposition heading into the draw, with Guimaraes going into the ties as comfortable favourites. Gil Vicente’s humbling 6-1 defeat to AZ Alkmaar, though not entirely surprising, was also disappointing in its emphatic nature, and heading into the third edition of the Europa Conference League, we are yet to see a Portuguese side reach the group stages of the Europa Conference League, a feat which is as embarassing as it is shocking.
To put it into perspective, nations such as Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, Kosovo, Ireland, Latvia and Lithuania have all had representatives in the UEFA Europa Conference League group stage at some point over the last three seasons - while Portugal, home to supposedly the 7th strongest league in the continent according to the UEFA Coefficient rankings, have not, despite now having had six attempts to do so. It is undoubtedly a concern, and illustrates the disparity Portugal faces between its top sides, who regularly make it to the knockout stages of the Champions League, and the rest of the league, which struggles to even make it to the group stage of the Europa Conference League.
More concerning is that the level of opposition that have managed to knock out Portuguese outfits has decreased quite drastically year on year. In the first season it was Tottenham Hotspur and Partizan Belgrade that eliminated Portugal’s hopefuls in the Conference League - ranked 14th and 67th respectively in the UEFA Club Rankings at the time. The season after, it was AZ Alkmaar and Hajduk Split that got the better of Portugal’s representatives - then respectively ranked 38th and 153rd in Europe. This time around, it was Brann - ranked 232nd - and Celje - ranked 367th - that dispatched of Portugal’s clubs.
It is a marked and worrying decline in perceived standard of opponent that has been able to overcome the teams finishing in the upper top half of the table in the Portuguese top flight, and there are several factors contributing to this substantial slump.
The financial disparity between the traditional Big Three of Benfica, Porto and Sporting - alongside SC Braga - and the rest of the nation’s clubs is startling, constantly growing, and a major issue. These legendary clubs are able to outspend their domestic rivals considerably, while also being able to purchase the best players of the so-called lesser sides of the division for sums that, in today’s market, are essentially inconsiquential to elite-level outfits such as themselves.
Indeed, Fran Navarro is perhaps the latest in a long line of players who have been scooped up by one of these bigger Portuguese clubs from their domestic rivals, making the move from Gil Vicente to Porto and joining a long list of players which has recently included the likes of Mehdi Taremi, Pedro Goncalves, Nuno Santos, Manuel Ugarte, Al Musrati and Andre Franco who have made the move to one of the top four clubs in the country directly from another Portuguese ouftit for unsubstantial transfer fees.
An inability to replace them effectively, supposedly due to either poor scouting or a lack of resources to attract players of suitable quality, has also been problematic, and evident in the stark decline of Portuguese performance levels at club level in Europe’s tertiary club competition.
It is not only the performance of Portuguese clubs in the Conference League that has indicates that standards are too low in the nation outside the top 4 - the attendance levels of the league also emphasise a division which is unsustainably top-heavy…
