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Sporting XXI (10/08/03) Sporting
Let's start with that 50,000. Well, on paper it's 52,000, but in fact it's below 50,000; the presence of the two giant screens, in opposite corners actually blocks the view of many seats. The Sporting
administration has come up with the brilliant idea of allocating these to blind people, but as the blind are very often accompanied by people with sight who give them running commentaries ... and the screens can hardly
be seen from some angles, e.g. way up in the press section. In fact from there, it's impossible to see the top half of the opposite stand, such is the low-slung sweep of the roof of the stadium, already unkindly likened
to a roller coaster track. This has an unsettling, claustrophobic effect which must be the same for the people high up in the opposite stand. The press section
on the night was a bad joke. The stadium was more than sold out, and the public were allowed to enter the press section and stake their claim to a seat there, leaving many journalists desperately scrounging a perch where they could. For those journalists who could find their rightful place, the space in which they were asked to work was ludicrously narrow, and the tables inclined at such an angle that laptops simple slid off into the journos' ... er ... laps. If they wanted to powder their noses, as it were ... nearest toilet, fourth floor (from the seventh, with a single lift that defied all logic in terms of progamming). To their credit, Sporting's administration has acknowledged these deficiencies and has promised to put them right ... which they will have to do before the UEFA big guns get their teeth into them.
The stadium itself was variously praised for its "magnificence"
by Portuguese footballing folk, celebrities and Alex Ferguson, but it is in fact a rather ugly edifice. The neat green and white hoops etched by the seats of the old Alvalade have disappeared; there's some green there, but only in patches, and yellow, for some reason, seems to be in equal evidence. Also, the majority of the seats make up a rainbowy mosaic effect, rather disconcerting in that it is difficult to make out the presence of human beings there (possibly Sporting thinking ahead to their future 10,000-average crowds). The
Other things to be put right during the
coming season are the deficient signposting in and around the ground, the deficient support of 'support' staff (who did not seem to have been properly briefed on organisational strategies for the Manchester game) and
the appalling playing surface, which was cut up like a ploughed field within minutes of the kick-off. This will all seem like a very negative view of Sporting's new home (and we haven't even mentioned the
obviously obscenely expensive but woefully ramshackle pre-match 'entertainment', a cheesy laser show on giant curtains that were only half up, then left bandage-like tatters when they came down, and the weird painting
in real time of the Sporting symbol on a large bedsheet by hundreds of young people dressed like the sperm in Woody Allen's 'All You Wanted to Know About Sex' ... an 'entertainment' not quite salvaged by the magnificent
Dulce Pontes, dressed incongruously in a mixture of Elizabethan and geisha styles, singing the Sporting anthem), but there are some positive aspects
about the stadium, and there were some postive aspects about the inauguration night. There is now a roof on the thing. This does obscure some of the opposite stands, but it holds in the sound beautifully, and will be
a million light years better than the old Alavalde in this respect. It will also keep us all dry in the winter. And finally, Sporting
played like a dream against Manchester United. If they can duplicate performances like that on a regular basis, then maybe all the rough edges of the Stadium and its organisation will take a back seat (but not too high up, because ...).
Review of the Year 2002 (December 2002) It's
been a pretty miserable year all round for Portuguese football, on and off the pitch, domestically and internationally. The Big Black Spot over the year was created by the so-called Golden Generation
's dismal showing in the World Cup in Korea/Japan. Portugal played pants, managing a win over weedy Poland but losing to the theoretically accessible USA and South Korea. Everything was wrong about the campaign,
starting with coach António Oliveira's selection of players (midfielder Paulo Sousa was a crock before he left Portugal, shaky Baía was chosen over the in-form Ricardo in goal) passing, disastrously, through the
misguided psychological preparation which suggested that the thing was as good as won and ending with João Pinto punching the Argentinian ref in the South Korea game, reflecting the indiscipline that surrounded the
Portuguese camp. Coach António Oliveira was there on tourism, according to reports, leaving the hotel room at ungodly hours with his assistants in tow to "go for a walk on the beach" (in their suits). The
man was justifiably shown the door, but the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) took their time doing it, as they did to name his successor. Agostinho Oliveira stood in and did a fine job in the autumn friendlies,
while the Federation hummed and hawed over whether it should be a Portuguese or foreign coach. 'Portuguese', it was decided, with the name of Manuel José in line ... but only as long as it took Gilberto Madaíl, the FPF
president, to be helped to win the FPF elections by the block vote of the Association of Portuguese Coaches. With his re-election in hand, Madaíl went back on his word and announced that World Cup hero with Brazil,
Felipe Scolari, would be the next national coach. At club level, Sporting won their second title in three years thanks more than anything to the almost uncanny goalscoring talent of Mário Jardel. The Brazilian's
personal year was an unhappy one as he split with his wife Karen. The soap opera of the separation coincided with the start of the new season, and Jardel was given several weeks' sick leave for 'psychological' problems.
Some saw the whole situation as a ruse by Jardel to get out of his contract with Sporting and into a more lucrative one with another club, preferably Spanish or Italian. No firm offers were forthcoming, however, and
Jardel was forced to eat his affirmations that he would never play in Portugal again and to return to Sporting. But his form and fitness have been missing, and Sporting have struggled to hit the levels of recent
seasons, with Niculae slow to recover from injury, Sá Pinto out injured, João Pinto only now beginning to shine again after his suspension for the Korean incident and newcomer Kutusov not really impressing. FC Porto
got rid of unpopular coach Octávio Machado at the beginning of the year and brought in José Mourinho, who had left Benfica under a cloud and had moved to União de Leiria where he did a good job. With very few changes to
the squad, Mourinho has performed a small miracle at Porto, restoring the famous mystique of invincibility that has been lost in the last few seasons. At the end of the year, they are six points clear at the top and
look untouchable. And in Deco, they have the player widely regarded as the best in the SuperLiga. Benfica failed to qualify for Europe for the second season running, but kept faith with coach Jesualdo Ferreira
... at least until November when he was replaced by Spaniard José Camacho. Like Mourinho at Porto, Camacho has brought back a little pride to the huge Benfica following; there were two thousand supporters to watch
training in Caldas da Rainha over Christmas. The team's football has become more solid and coherent, and winger Simão and midfielder Tiago are sure to be key players in Portugal's EURO 2004 campaign. Boavista reached
the quarter-final stage of the Champions League, but because of financial limitations (the club has only recently broken the 15,000 level of sócios), they had to sell the influential midfielder Petit (Benfica)
and had to let captain Pedro Emanuel go (FC Porto). The team has found it hard to replace these two, and a terrible start to this season sees them in the lower reaches of the table, although recent form shows promise.
Surprise teams of the season so far are Varzim, Belenenses and Gil Vicente, all challenging for the European places. Of the teams that came up, only Nacional of Madeira have shown anything, while Moreirense struggle and
Académica are bottom and in dire financial straits that saw the board resign recently. In fact all the clubs in the so-called SuperLiga
(re-named for marketing purposes, although some have criticised the name as a patent misnomer) have some kind of money trouble. Clubs are resorting to opening their doors on match days to get people into the habit of coming back to football. But the image of the game here is at its lowest ebb ever. After the scandal of missing funds at Benfica which left former-president João Vale e Azevedo in prison for embezzlement, it was the turn of Vitória de Guimarães president Pimenta Machado who was arrested in December on the same charge. As the year turns, suspicion is flaring once again. Sporting president Dias da Cunha told Radio TSF: "There's a lot of money passed under the table in the Portuguese game, a lot of creative accounting, a lot of dirty money."
It's a story that will run and run into the new year.
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