Portugal will take the lead in football over the next two weeks, a country where club rivalries go beyond the field of the game.
The decisive stages of the Champions League will kick off on Wednesday in this southern European country, where accusations and trials involving the country’s groups are common.
Club leaders are not afraid to attack publicly. The government is investigating the groups for alleged irregularities. Even players and their agents are not immune to controversy.
It was not long ago that the search and seizure operations took place simultaneously at the headquarters of Benfica, Porto and Sporting Lisbon, the 3 largest clubs in the country. This happened just before the coronavirus pandemic hit, while the government was investigating imaginable tax evasion and football irregularities in an operation called “Offside.”
The presidents of the three clubs have been accused of irregularities in recent years, although they have claimed their innocence and royal convictions have been rare.
Benfica, two-time European champion in the 1960s and Portugal’s top-selling club with 37 league titles, has been the target in more than a handful of cases over the more than five years. Negotiation of his shares was temporarily suspended last month after the newest fees were set against the club for alleged tax evasion.
Benfica, however, won one of its biggest legal victories in a high-profile case of 2019 in which a Porto media official accused of systematically filtering data from internal emails received from the opponent.
Porto ordered by judgment issued to pay Benfica almost 2 million euros (2.3 million dollars) in damages, as well as to return all the documents that still had similar to the case. Porto said at the time that the emails showed a bribing scheme in favor of Benfica, which has not been shown in court. Porto claimed to have revealed only information that the court itself had considered to be true.
The main points of the case have been constantly discussed in sports broadcasts and in the Portuguese media, which use anonymous resources to publish data on court bodies involving clubs.
Following a recent series of accusations against Benfica’s president Luus Filipe Vieira, published through the local media, the club’s lawyers issued deplorable public scrutiny of the official.
“This is unfortunate, ” he said. “Trials are delivered in the court of public opinion and in the media. Justice would be better served if everyone focused on their own affairs”
Benfica, the most popular club in the country, has also faced unproven rates similar to match-wi making accusations and referee corruption. Some of them were made public through the former president of Sporting Lisbon, Bruno de Carvalho, whom he accused of irregularities while running his club.
Among Carvalho’s accusations he faced the preparation of a hobby attack on players who disagreed with him. About 50 fans, face-covered, made their way to the team’s school and assaulted the players and staff in the incident that made headlines around the world two years ago.
De Carvalho, who belonged to a radical fanatical organization, was arrested, but denied any crime and was eventually found not guilty.
Earlier this year, The president of Porto, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, denied having acted badly after a local magazine said that the club and high-level agent Jorge Mendes were being investigated for tax fraud and cash similar to the move of players like Radamel Falcoo and Iker Casillas. Mendes is the agent of Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo.
Porto said at the time that neither the club nor Costa had been contacted through the government about the investigation. He said the time of the news was suspicious just before a Portuguese league fit with rival Benfica.
Porto, champion of Europe in 1987 and 2004, is Portugal’s highest moment as a successful club with 29 league titles, adding the one he won this season following the resumption of the league amid the coronavirus pandemic. The game is next with 18 championship titles. Only two other outdoor clubs, the 3 sensitive highs, have won the Portuguese league: Belenenses in 1946 and Boavista in 2001.
Everyone will take a stand in the next two weeks as the Champions League approaches. And maybe, perhaps, let their off-field controversies also set aside for a while.
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