How much does the geography and politics of a country influence the development of its football culture? In this episode co-hosts Guy and Francesco talk to journalist Miguel Lourenço Pereira about football and politics in one of Europe's most fascinating countries, Portugal. Miguel is the author of several books including the recent "Bring me that horizon. A journey through the soul of Portuguese football". He explains how the history of Portuguese football is closely connected to the country's history and geography. Miguel also discusses the central role of the "big three" Portuguese clubs, the contribution of Africa and Brazil, Cristiano Ronaldo and Eusebio, the experience of the Portuguese diaspora and the position of Portugal in the current global football markets.
How much does the geography and politics of a country influence the development of its football culture? In this episode co-hosts Guy and Francesco talk to journalist Miguel Lourenço Pereira about football and politics in one of Europe's most fascinating countries, Portugal. Miguel is the author of several books including the recent "Bring me that horizon. A journey through the soul of Portuguese football". He explains how the history of Portuguese football is closely connected to the country's history and geography. Miguel also discusses the central role of the "big three" Portuguese clubs, the contribution of Africa and Brazil, Cristiano Ronaldo and Eusebio, the experience of the Portuguese diaspora and the position of Portugal in the current global football markets.
Guy Burton 00:23
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of the footPol podcast. I'm one of your co -hosts, Guy Burton, and I am joined by my other co-host, Francesco Belcastro. How are you doing, Francisco?
Francesco Belcastro 00:32
I'm all right, Guy. How about you?
Guy Burton 00:33
Yeah, not bad, actually. Looking forward to the topic that we're speaking about this week. So, we're talking about Portuguese football. And to do that, we've been joined by Miguel Lourenco Pereira, who's a Portuguese journalist, and he's going to be telling us about his new book, which is based on Portuguese football.
Guy Burton 00:52
Miguel, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 00:54
Hi, Guy. Hi Francesco. Very happy to here, chatting with you about the book about Portuguese Football and that thing that's passionate about, the relationship between football and society in general.
Guy Burton 01:05
Yeah, well, thank you for taking the time to come and join us. And before we start, I just want to sort of give a little bit of a heads up to the listeners about who Miguel is and what he's done. So as we said, you know, he is the author of the new book about Portuguese football, which is called Bring Me That Horizon: A Journey to The Soul of Portuguese Football.
Francesco Belcastro 01:23
Which we highly recommend. Can I add that?
Guy Burton 01:25
Actually, yes, we do. I mean, I was reading it over a couple of weeks and enjoyed it hugely. So good rating from me, and it's published by Pitch Publishing. The link to the book will be available in the show notes for anyone who's interested.
Guy Burton 01:45
But also, Miguel has published a number of other books - sporting books, including Noites Europeas - European Nights - Suenos de la Euro - Euro Dreams - and Cruyff: Anatomy of a Genius. And he's also published in Portugal, Spain and Brazil for over a decade in a number of different publications including Panenka, Libero, Futebol magazine, In Bed with Maradona and Corner.
Guy Burton 02:09
So Miguel again welcome to the show but before we start one of the things we always like to ask guests is do you have a team and if so who it is?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 02:18
Yes I have a team it's FC Porto. I'm a club member since I was very young and I was lucky enough to be born in 1984. That was exactly the period when to start to become a dominating force in Portuguese football and I was able to enjoy a lot of that going to the pitch since a very tender age.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 02:38
Seeing Porto win the Champions League, the UEFA, more than 20 leagues for a club from the second city of a country who is part of the European periphery. It's a very enthralling experience so I think now I can live the rest of my life without seeing Porto to win anything and that would be just covered for all the things I had to enjoyed until now!
Guy Burton 02:59
Well, fantastic!
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 03:00
I hope it doesn't happen at least.
Guy Burton 03:02
Can we start off with the title of the book? What does the title mean? Bring Me That Horizon?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 03:10
Well, basically it's a tribute to the history of Portugal itself and its essence. It was a sentence used by sailors during the 16th, 17th centuries when Portugal became probably the nation that invented globalization.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 03:28
Basically Portugal is the oldest country in the world with the terrestrial borders defined since the 13th century that Portugal hasn't moved a single inch because you have a neighbor like Spain, bigger, more military power, more political influence, so you're not able to expand yourself in land.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 03:50
Portugal had to find a way to expand by sea. So basically, they started to use their ability to hire Italian sailors and to create specific types of ships that were able to cross the Atlantic. And during those two, three centuries between 1415 and the early 1600s, basically Portugal was the dominant force in the world.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 04:14
And the horizon has always been something that Portuguese looked forward to. Basically, you have to look for the horizon because you have nowhere else to go. And that identity translated to the football as well, as being a country in the periphery of Europe, like I said before, it eliminates yourself in a very big deal in Portuguese.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 04:34
You always have to find a strategic way to corner that. They have been able to do that especially over the last 20 to 25 years by having the best players playing the best leagues in the world, their managers coaching the best teams in world and their clubs winning trophies and also their national side also winning the Euros.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 04:55
So basically it was a sort of an homage to that identity as a nation.
Francesco Belcastro 05:00
Now your book is really rich in terms of different themes that define or that influence the relationship within football and politics in the case of Portugal. Could you tell us perhaps for us listeners and people like me who are not very familiar with Portuguese football.
Francesco Belcastro 05:18
What would you say are the themes of themes that are crucial to understand this relationship in the case of Portugal?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 05:25
Well Portugal had one of the longest serving fascist dictatorships in in all the world. It lasted more than than 50 years and it shaped the country mentally, socially and culturally and of course that it saved its football as well and Portuguese football grew up with that weight on their shoulders and it was a fascist regime that didn't want to use football like other regimes did.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 05:54
For instance in Italy we all know how Mussolini used football a lot during these early days to create a sense of national pride and identity. We know that Spain had a very complex relationship between politics and football but it was also an important part from the the period where Franco was ruling the country.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 06:10
But Salazar, who was the dictator that Portugal had between the early 30s and 1972, was basically a guy like Adolf Hitler. He loathed football. He was much more into gymnastics. He hated every kind of sports that could arouse a mob.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 06:26
So basically he did everything he could to prevent the evolution of the game at the same pace that was happening with other countries from Southern Europe. So, basically, Portugal entered late in the stage of international football, and it was curiously enough, one of the few things that Salazar saw, that football could be of use to his regime, that was the integration of African colonies in a period where all the African nations were starting to gain their independence from the former colonial empires, from the British, the French, the Germans, the Spanish.And to use the players born in Africa to be treated like they were Portuguese born in continental Europe, and have football teams in Portugal using those players, getting those to play for the national side.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 07:13
It was the only thing that helped Portugal on the long run because basically what that brought to Portuguese football was a quality they didn't have in continental Europe, a sort of type of player that was very different.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 07:26
It was different physically, it was different technically, and it was different mentally. And that was... that shaped the first golden age of Portuguese football in the 1960s, where Benfica won twice in a row the European Cup and played in another three finals, where Portugal played the semifinals of the World Cup 1966 and lost against England.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 07:49
And basically, that was also a consequence of that idea to integrate the African -born players, as negroes, most of them, into the Portuguese side. And of course, if you want to talk about the importance of politics in Portuguese football, you have to mention the Cup Final of 1969, because it was probably one of the most important football matches in Western Europe in terms of political.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 08:13
The influence that it had on the fall of the fascist regime was used. It was a time of change, where the winds of May of 1968 in France were starting to arrive late, of course, because being a fascist country with all the censorship meant that the ideas came a little bit later than in other countries of Western Europe. But basically planted the seed of the change, that match, because it was the first time that was public manifestation against the regime.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 08:42
And five years on, a lot of the people that were in the final of that day played in Lisbon between Benfica and Academica who is a club from Coimbra, the town where the main university of the country was located and it was on strike during those days. Basically came together and inspired the military who then made the coup that reinstated democracy in 1974.
Francesco Belcastro 09:08
Can I ask you one thing, just to follow up? Would you say that the relationship between football and politics is still as important as it was in this crucial phase in the 60s and 70s? Is there still a strong connection there?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 09:21
Well, the thing is, Portuguese society is not a very political society in a sense that there's not a very big ideological difference, like you see in countries like Spain, for instance, where there's clearly still a very marked line between the people from the right wing and people from left wing.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 09:44
And so football now in Portugal became more connected with the regional differences between north and south and a more - idea between a a centralized country around Lisbon and the country that is outside of it, which is part of the cultures and society since the 16th, 17th century where all the wealth that came from the colonial empire of Africa, Brazil, of India, flocked into Lisbon, but never reaches the other side of the country.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 10:17
So basically football encaptures that differences today but politically-wise, there's not a very... Taking a standard for clubs, for players, for fans on a political level like you see for instance in Germany or sometimes in Spain with certain clubs like Rayo Vallecano, for instance, who are very political in what they want to express.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 10:42
That doesn't happen in Portuguese football.
Guy Burton 10:43
Maybe we can sort of move on from there, because what you said about being very much concentrated around Lisbon. I mean, one of the things that comes through in the book is you write about the Big Three: about Benfica, Sporting and Porto.
Guy Burton 10:57
And I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about these particular clubs, who they represent, how they came to be, their relationship with politics.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 11:09
Portugal basically is a country where there is no localism in a sense of supporting a football club. So if you go to Italy, of course, you have Juventus, Inter, Milan who has a spread wide support. If you got to Spain, you had Barcelona and Real Madrid, a little bit of Atletico Madrid and Atletico Bilbao.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 11:27
But in Portugal 90% at least of the population supports one of the Big Three and that has a consequence on the way the identities of those clubs were shaped in time and also conditionated the game. Because without that localism, without economic support, the other clubs beside those three were never able to flourish and to present alternatives. And then it entered on a very repeated circle where the three clubs were just fighting for power against one another, sometimes allying one or two against the other, sometimes just fighting the three among themselves.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 12:04
And basically each of those clubs represent different aspects of society. Now diluted of course because the origins of both clubs have been established in the the early 20th century and now society as we know has evolved and we have representatives of all the society groups in every single club. But the identity is still there.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 12:27
Sporting, for instance, Sporting Portugal, who is probably going to win the league this year, is a country well rooted in ability. It was a county [club?] funded by well -to -know men connected with the monarchy, the late monarchy period, and they always had that aristocratic view of sports and especially of football.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 12:47
On the contrary, Benfica was always a very popular club. A c.lub much more intertwined with the middle classes and the poor classes of Lisbon. And Porto also had a very idiosyncratic image of being a representative of the northern part of the country, which is more the commercial side of Portugal.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 13:09
So basically the three clubs expanded in different areas in the sense that when they were winning they would gain more support and that came not only through football, but also through cycling, because during the 20s and 30s, cycling was as popular as football in Portugal.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 13:27
So basically, Portuguese football was reduced in the league to only eight teams that played around Lisbon, Porto, Setubal and Coimbra, who are all four towns that are on the coastline. So the clubs from the interior side of Portugal, from the southern part of the Portugal, from the tip of the north of Portugal, weren't able to see Porto Benfica and Sporting play.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 13:51
But they were able see those cycling teams travel around the country on their different tours. So basically when a cycler from each one of those clubs won a stage in a small village in the interior, probably the football team was starting to gain support there as a correlation.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 14:10
And basically we can trace back to those days when Sporting had a better team in cycling, they got better support in the tournament areas when it was Benfica's turn or when it's Porto's turn they would turn around. And when we reach the 1950s -60s, that's when the league starts to spread and starts become more representative nationwide.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 14:31
The popularity of those clubs were rapidly established in areas where they never haven't even played a single match. So basically that also made Portuguese supporters, a different supporter from let's say a German supporter, a Dutch supporter or a British supporter because they pretty much prefer to support one of the Big Three. The Big Three club, that's usually a club that started with the grandfather then goes to the father to the son and basically a familiar link from the beginning.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 15:00
Then to support the local club most of local clubs in Portugal when they host a match with any of the Big Three and the Big Three team scores a goal almost all the stadium starts to applaud. So that's the reality.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 15:15
That's also been one of the biggest problems of Portuguese football, to be able to grow and to be more economically powerful, because in the sense that when the Big Three dry everything around them, they also are not able to grow themselves more than where they are.
Francesco Belcastro 15:32
Can I ask you one thing, Miguel? So the Big Three are sport clubs that have other sports as well as football I assume, right? So it's just, so they will have representatives in other sports as well. Like same as happened, as happens in countries such as Spain, for example.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 15:48
There's two fundamental things. They are club members' clubs. So the club belongs to the club members in every single case. Club members can vote. The club members have an important side on the governing of the club, they elect the president each four years.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 16:04
So that creates an even stronger link because you can be a club member for a club in Lisbon but live in Porto or live north of Porto. You just go to Lisbon to see a couple of matches a year but there's a sense of belonging, being a club member. And also like you said each single club has at least seven or eight sports beside football and they are very good at it because they just don't dominate football, they dominate basketball, they dominate handball, they dominate the cycling teams, and they dominate hockey.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 16:33
So since they win all the time in every single sport, then you have the supporters of those sports also enthralling in the same dynamics of the football supporters.
Guy Burton 16:43
But you also, from what I understand as well, you know, the Big Three also have their roots spread across Portugal as well in terms of smaller... I don't know what to call them, farm teams, or from which they draw their players as well.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 17:01
Right. It was bigger back in the day, but it was usually when a team, one of the Big Three were on the rise, the popularity they had made people create clubs that would be inspired in that team.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 17:16
So for instance, there's a lot of sportings in Portugal besides Sporting Club Portugal, which is the correct name of Sporting Lisbon. Usually people call them Sporting Lisbon and they are very mad at it because they are Sporting club Portugal.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 17:28
But then you had a lot of sportings, you have Sporting Braga, you have Sporting Farense... You have teams that were built initially, inspired by Sporting and their success. Also, Benfica has clubs who are with a similar crest, with the similar colors. Porto as well.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 17:44
So that creates a sense also of dependence. Those clubs, when they started to expand on their geographical areas and when they started to grow, they would provide players to the feeder team basically and support as well. So in a sense that's why I said they rooted themselves in the center of football in Portugal and their roots go very inside the land in every single aspect of the game. And now in the present, what they are doing is installing academies throughout the country so you have football players who are not playing for the club of their hometown, but they are directly already playing the academy of one of the Big Three.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 18:28
So before, back in the day, you had football players playing a club, let's say, Academico Viseu, for instance, he's a club from a town in interior. He would play there until he was getting first team football, and then he would be signed by one Big Three.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 18:44
But now, since the early days, when it's 10, 11, 12, he's playing for the academy of that club installed in Viseu so directly he's already connected with the club. And when he gets to 14 -15, if he is good enough, they send him to Lisbon, they send them to Porto to play with the main club.
Guy Burton 19:01
Well no, so that's something I wanted to come to because, you know, the history of Portugal as well is strongly intertwined with a broader Lusophone area and, you know, the former colonies you particularly referenced, the African ones earlier on in the discussion.
Guy Burton 19:16
And so, of course, you know, two of Portugal's most celebrated footballers amongst these, Eusebio and Cristiano Ronaldo, who both hail from this periphery: Eusebio from Mozambique, Ronaldo from the island of Madeira.
Guy Burton 19:31
And I think, actually, they also came from teams that were affiliated to the Big Three. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit... But I'm curious if could you tell not just about that, but also a little bit about these two personalities, their origins and the extent to which they're sort of representative of Portuguese identity, whether they even sort of, you know, there's a political dimension to these two figures as well.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 19:56
Like you said, more than the two, for instance, Fernando Peyroteo still ranks as the player with the best goal average in the football history, also was born in Angola and traveled to Lisbon to play for Sporting when he was 18.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 20:09
He boarded ownership in in the capital of Angola then, which was a Portuguese colony, arrived in Lisbon to do a test and he stayed there for 12 years. And so he brought the link together between Portugal continental and Portugal colonies in Africa.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 20:24
The difference is that he was white, because his parents were both Portuguese born who had went to Africa to get a better opportunity in life than they had in Lisbon. The differences with Eusebio is black, of course, although his father was Portuguese from continental Portugal, his mother was Mozambican. So he represents the mix between what is Portugal as a European nation and what is Portugal as globalizing identity in a sense. If you are a country that has been covering different parts of the world for I would say 500 years then you have to have an icon that represents that symbiosis of what you are.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 21:08
You're not just the Portugal from the continental Europe. You are much more than that. And in a sense, Eusebio represents that because he has Portuguese continental European blood by his father, but he's also very African in every single way, both physically, technically, mentally and the way he grew up in Mozambique represents that side of the former colonial empire, but also the the influence that Portugal had in the world.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 21:34
So as a football player he kind of represented both sides and that's why he's still today despite being a huge figure of course of Benfica, well beloved for fans of Sporting and fans f Porto. Because they all see in him that representation of what Portugal as a nation really is, beside the European borders.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 21:57
Cristiano is a different story. Cristiano comes from Madeira, a small island in the Atlantic. And he also went to Lisbon to play for Sporting when he was just 12. He played in the feeder club of Sporting in the island and then he moved, like I said, because they detected he had enough talent to to be moving to Lisbon and to grow in Sporting's academy.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 22:19
Madeira as an island has a very particular identity. It was a a very republican ethos island in a sense that they are very aware of the importance they always had politically-wise. There was also a port where every single ship that traded between Europe, Africa, and South America mainly would usually board between Madeira or the Canary Islands, they're very close by.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 22:48
So they are used to have foreign influence. If it's British, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Moroccan, so they are very used to have different cultures and that shaped the way they play and they shaped their mentality as well and Cristiano is from a very, very poor family from the area. But in a way he also has that work ethic that really made him a special player despite all the huge talent he has.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 23:16
It's that word ethic that's really shaped that the identity of the Portuguese. Because basically if are from a country as small as Portugal, you really have to have work ethics if you want to have any sort of possibility in a world with superpowers who have much more capacity to impose what they really want from you.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 23:37
And in that sense, the Portuguese feel very well represented, especially the Portugese who live in the diaspora, because one of the huge consequences of Salazar's regime was that during the 1960s and early 70s, more than 2 million people left Portugal to work in countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, or even Canada and the United States.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 23:59
And I have family who had to suffer that fate. And those people look at Cristiano Ronaldo and they are very proud that a guy from a poor family like they are was able to be crowned the best in world. For them is like a vindication of we are poor but we are not worse than anyone else. So that was also a very important message that his career had throughout the Portuguese society, not only from the people who are physically in Portugal but also from the Portuguese who live spread out the world.
Francesco Belcastro 24:30
Guy, as the resident half Brazilian do you want to ask a half Brazilian question?
Guy Burton 24:36
Yes, I mean this is one of the things... So you know, as a Portuguese speaker.; I mean, for me, I've been listening to you talking about Portugal, the Portuguese diaspora, Portuguese people traveling to other places in Europe, North America. And yet there's this gap we haven't addressed yet, which is the influence of Brazil in Portugal.
Guy Burton 24:57
Because of course, a lot of Brazilian players came to Portugal to play. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the history of that and what that's meant for Portugal and whether it's had any kind of political or social consequences as well.
Guy Burton 25:13
I mean, the most notable one player I can think of would be Deco, you know, who was a Brazilian, but ended up playing for Portugal.
Francesco Belcastro 25:20
Pepe. Yeah.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 25:22
Yeah, two very contemporary and great examples of that. And of course, Portugal -Brazil relationship is a very complex one, because basically we can say that Portugal is the only colonizer from the Old World, let's say, that has been colonized by its former colony.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 25:40
And the British at least, despite of the global importance that the American had, still maintain some sort of prestige. The Spanish, although the Latin America has gained greatest relevance over the years, they still have a sense of emotional dependence to the heritage from Spain.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 25:59
But with Portugal, that didn't happen because basically Brazil is a continent. It's not only a country. So imagine Portugal with their 11 million inhabitants, it's smaller than most Brazilian states. It's smaller than Sao Paulo. So basically, the influence that Portugal had in Brazil despite taking all their gold in the 18th century, was very, very scarce.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 26:26
And also the connection between Portuguese football and Brazilian football was very thin until the 1970s, because Portugal used every resource they had from Africa, so they didn't need to buy players from Brazil, and Brazilian players didn t need come to Portugal, first because the Brazilian League until the 1980s was very strong, it was rare to see Brazilian players abroad. And afterwards, because when they came to Europe, they were so good, they were directly going to the bigger clubs in Italy, or in Spain. They did not need to come to Portugal.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 26:55
That started to change during the 80s, and basically, the change of the regime meant that the New Republic wanted to open Portugal to the world. Portugal had been very closed within itself. And there was two ways to do that.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 27:09
It was a way of being culturally more close to the British and the American... Importing television shows, lots of cinema, a lot of literature. But in a country that had a high level of illiteracy, that was an issue.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 27:22
So basically the authorities, what they did was start to import things from Brazil. That started with soap operas, who are extremely popular in Brazil became extremely popular in Portugal, then went to the music, and basically it ended up with the football.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 27:36
So basically from the 1980s onwards Brazilian singers, Brazilian actors and Brazilian players were the flavor of the month in Portugal and they became the symbols of perfection of what they wanted to aspire and that created a sort of emotional dependence.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 27:53
When a football club in Portugal signed a Brazilian he was the good one. Hecould be worse than the players from Portugal, but just for having a Brazilian passport made him directly the better one. Also, when the Brazilian acts of musical group came to Portugal they would get the best venues because they came from Brazil.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 28:10
Brazilian actors were well respected in Portugal, more than the Portuguese ones. The example of perfect beauty was the Brazilian women for Portuguese men. The perfect tourist destination was Brazil, of course.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 28:24
So that created a source of dependence. But with time it changed. At the same time that Brazilians started to come to live in Portugal because the economical situation in Portugal got better after they entered the EU, and the situation economically in Brazil started getting worse.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 28:39
So when Brazilans really started came to live here there was a sense of a backlash and a sense of xenophobia and racism that is very present in Portuguese society. I think it's an European issue. But in a Portuguese society it was an issue that was not discussed about because nobody came here so people didn't have to face the dilemma.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 28:57
But over the past 20 years, it's been much... a very tense relationship between Portuguese and Brazil is in Portugal and in football as well. That's why when Deco started to play for the national side, it was such a scandal because people believe that there was no need at that moment to have a Brazilian playing for the national team.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 29:15
Ten years prior, it would be the greatest honor bestowed to a football nation to have a Brazilian star like he was to play for national site. But times were changing. And now we still live in that complex reality where now we have Portuguese managers coaching in Brazil and winning trophies in Brazil.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 29:32
So now the colonizer is a coloniser again. And that's a very complex situation. Only football can bring situations like that one.
Francesco Belcastro 29:41
Okay. So this is really interesting. I've got a question on the role of Portugal in this football supply chain. We've had an episode a few months ago with Scott Coyne from the Belgium Football Podcast on the role of... we spoke about the role Belgium on in this global market of football so to speak. And it seems to me that in a sense, with differences, Portugal and Belgium are comparable in that they are sort of second level in terms of financial might, but they're both countries that are very much in part, punch above their weight. But there is a sort -of this this sense that it's almost like a place of transition for a lot of players.
Francesco Belcastro 30:24
Is that the case? And what does it mean in terms of political implications? Does that mean something in the relation between politics and football, would you say, Miguel?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 30:33
It's definitely the same case, I believe. The European periphery, which means every single league outside the big four, big five now has to produce the talent that eventually will go out to the bigger teams in those leagues, especially the Premier League and the Championship.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 30:52
The greatest difference that Portugal has towards other European nations such as Belgium or the Netherlands or Greece or Turkey, or even Russia, is that they are a point of connection between Europe, Africa and South America still.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 31:09
So, Portugal is still able to scout and to bring to the league players that come from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, also African countries, better than other countries in Europe, because they have been doing that for the past 40 years.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 31:28
So they had established already networks. They have great scouting teams. Not only the Big Three, but other smaller clubs as well. They work with a set group of football agents and the figure of Jorge Mendes, of course, it's impossible to speak about Portuguese football in the present and especially within that supply chain without speaking of Mendes's because it really controls a lot of the information flowing from those parts of world.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 31:54
So Portuguese football has that upper hand.
Francesco Belcastro 31:57
Sorry, can I interrupt you for listeners? I might be a bit less familiar with him. Who is Jorge Mendes?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 32:04
Jorge Mendes is probably the most influential football agent working currently and over the past 20 years is the guy that really transformed the idea of a football agent. Football agents have been around for decades, but until the Bosman law came in 1994 where players started to really own their destinies and started really to need someone to advise them financially and to advise them where they would go because until that moment it was only a negotiation between football clubs that allowed players to move from one side to another.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 32:42
But after the Bosman law everything changed and football became in the hands of the players and eventually football agents came to the rescue and they started to grow in relevance for their careers but also for the club's structuring.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 32:55
So basically Jorge Mendes is one of the biggest in the world and probably the most relevant over the past two decades. He is the agent of Cristiano Ronaldo of course, Jose Mourinho, but a lot of other players not only Portuguese. And he established a network throughout the years that has made him a current figure when you see a football match in Real Madrid stadium but also Manchester United but also Bayern and Juventus and you can see him in center stage because he's present everywhere. He has connections all around. And that was in itself a weapon that for Portuguese football used in their favour because counting was such an influential figure made those football clubs we talked before - Porto, Benfica, Sporting - more able to produce the talent but also be able to sell it to the highest bidder with the best possible price.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 33:49
Talent was being produced also in Netherlands, also in Belgium, also in the Nordics, also in Central Europe, but they were having a tougher time to place it on the big stage. And Portugal, with Mendes, with other smaller agents that grew in his shadow, was able to not only put the local players in that market, but also persuade younger players from South America and from Africa that if they came to Portugal and spent a couple of seasons there, they will also get the possibility to sell to the Real Madrids, to Liverpools, the Chelseas the Manchester Citys of life.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 34:26
That has changed a little bit over the years because usually Portuguese clubs were used as the middleman. You would spot an 18 -year -old Brazilian potential superstar, he would sign for Porto, Benfica or Sporting, and he would spend a couple of seasons in Portugal, play Champions League football and some of the bigger leagues would take notice and would sign them.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 34:49
What we see over the past three to five years, especially with clubs already creating that multi club culture and strategy, we see they are signing those players directly. They are not using the middleman anymore.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 35:04
And that will have a huge impact in the influence of Portugal in the European game. Because now they're not able to go and sign the Viniciuses, the Endricks, the players that are in Brazil starting because Real Madrid got their first or Manchester City got there first. And they are not shy to spend more money than Portuguese clubs could and provide those players already with the possibility of being in a bigger team.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 35:31
So basically what Portuguese football needs to do is to reinvent themselves. And have done it brilliantly in a sense. They're starting to look inside once again and are starting to give more relevance to the players that are already in the Portuguese football lower leagues, already playing on the youth teams and that's why now we have a generation of Portuguese players that are already in best leagues in world when they are 20, 21, 22 playing in PSG, in Barcelona, in Italy, the Premiership, and the Bundesliga. Because that is the way they have managed to stay relevant.
Francesco Belcastro 36:08
So, yeah, we've not asked you anything regarding the national football team. Would you say that some of the trends or some of these issues that you mentioned when we talk about Portuguese football in general are reflected in the way that the national football team is perceived?
Francesco Belcastro 36:25
Is the international football team a symbol of unified Portugal? Is it seen in a way as reflecting the divisions within the country and in and the broader area of influence, if you want, of Portugal?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 36:39
Yeah, it does. It did more in the past than it does now. Portugal's national team has become a football club in itself. Basically, until the early 2000s, the national team was seen as a very proud team for Portuguese who lived abroad.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 36:58
There's usually when the Portuguese immigrants who live in other parts of Europe and come to spend the summer holidays in Portugal. They usually come by car. They came from France, from Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Germany.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 37:11
And most of them have a sticker on their car with the national license plates or wherever they come with a Portuguese Federation logo. Not a Portuguese flag, but the Portuguese federation logo. That's what they feel most proud of when they are abroad.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 37:27
Not Portugal, the country, because Portugal the has a lot of issues and basically that's what kicked them out or their families before them to live abroad. But the Portuguese national team brought them something to be proud of. Because when they played good when, they won, they could look in the eye of the Germans, of the French, and say we're not worse than you. But for the people who are living in Portugal, the Portuguese national team entered the Game of Thrones between the big three so if you had a very good generation of players and you were a Benfica supporter and those players were playing through the national side, then Sporting and Porto supporters would be against the national team because they were picking players from Benfica and, you can change the name of the club, but the rivalry will still be the same.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 38:13
But during the last 15 to 20 years that changed. And that changed because Portugal's national team started to field players who only play abroad. Because the teams from Portugal are not able to retain the talent anymore besides the 21, 22, 23 years of age.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 38:31
So usually all the good players are playing in the Premiership, are play in La Liga, in the Bundesliga, and the Serie A. So basically despite they have been playing any moment of their lives for one of the Big Three, or a youth product of one of the Big Three.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 38:44
They are now players from Manchester United, from Liverpool, from AC Milan, from Real Madrid. So that in itself kind of erased the internal guerrilla [war] between the rivalries of the Big Three and created a new kind of supporter, a supporter of the national side as an independent club, as a fourth big club in Portugal.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 39:04
And especially with the younger generations who never lived the period when the national team fielded players that played in the league. They now only know those players, not from seeing them live on the pitch like the previous generations, but only by seeing on the television or playing with them in the PlayStation with the FIFA's.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 39:23
So basically they are more devoted to the national side because they feel they belong more to that idea of a national team than their fathers or their grandfathers who always said that the club came first and the national side came second.
Guy Burton 39:38
Just very quickly: what are your expectations for the Euros this year?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 39:44
Well, I think Portugal has a very good chance to win the trophy, which probably means they won't! Because like it happened in 2016, it was probably the worst side Portugal fielded in a competition for a long time and they managed to win.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 39:57
Very similar to what happened with Denmark in 1992. Basically Portugal was always known to play very good football, but never winning. It happened in 2000, 84, 2004, 2012. So they have a brilliant generation of players.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 40:12
And I think they had more abundance now than they ever had. But that in itself is also an issue, because you have to create group dynamics to be successful in international sports nowadays. To create a group dynamic, you need to have like a team of 15 to 16 players who are very used to play along each other. And create those types of dynamics takes time and the new national coach, Spaniard Roberto Martinez used the past two years to try a lot of different players, try a lot of different strategies on the pitch.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 40:44
So there's not a recognizable 11 still for this generation of Portuguese football. And then, of course, it's the figure of Cristiano Ronaldo still looming there. And we saw what happened in the last World Cup when he was already on the downside of his career, but he insisted he had to still play every single match. That created a problem within the dressing room.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 41:07
He didn't play the match of the the last 16 against Switzerland, which Portugal won easily against Sweden. Then he didn t play initially with the with a match against Morocco. And when he entered, he wasn't able to perform, but he's still a very dominant figure in Portuguese football and his influence is huge.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 41:28
So it will be very hard to see a Portuguese national side play without Cristiano, if Cristiano wants to play for the national side, and he really does because he is a man who thinks he probably eternal and wants keep on breaking records, which he probably will.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 41:42
But that in itself, it's an issue for a national -side coach because he has to create a group dynamics, but also a group dynamics that includes a figure that is now playing a different sport than everyone else really because of his age and his limitations.
Francesco Belcastro 41:58
Miguel, can I ask you to remind listeners the title of your book and where they can find it?
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 42:02
Thank you very much. And one of the main ideas behind the book was that there was no book about Portuguese football written in English. So like you said a very influential country in football history deserved a book that tried to explain at least some of the things that we have been discussing here and the singularities of the game.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 42:21
The book is called Bring Me That Horizon: A Journey to the Soul of Portuguese Football. The publisher is Pitch Publishing and you can find it in Amazon or in every single bookstore in the UK. And if you are in continental Europe just use the Amazon of your country and it's available there to purchase.
Guy Burton 42:42
Well listen, Miguel, thank you so much for taking the time to come talk to us. We really only just scratched the surface because I know there's so much more in that book and it's well worth the read. So Miguel, thank you again for taking the time to speak.
Miguel Lourenco Pereira 42:55
Thank you both for having me. It was great.
Guy Burton 42:58
And Francesco, now we need to sort of just wrap up. What are the usual things that we have to say?
Francesco Belcastro 43:02
Well, first of all, Miguel's book had a very good review from you. And I, I knew you're very strict with the reviews. So five stars from you... It happens very rarely so that should be a clear message to listeners to actually get the book. We need to remind listeners to a few a few things, the usual ones. Well first of all we need thank them for getting in touch with us and suggesting episodes and we have to ask them to keep doing that. They can find us everywhere. They can find us on... well, we've got a Twitter X page, FootPol Facebook page, we are on Blue Sky, then they can find us individually on LinkedIn
Guy Burton 43:41
And we've got an Instagram account.
Francesco Belcastro 43:43
We've got an Instagram account. And then the other thing is to please share, like, follow - whatever system you can do on your on the platform where you're getting the podcast - share the podcast with friends, family... And yeah and let's keep- push this thing and help us do that.
Guy Burton 44:07
Yeah. And who are we speaking to next week? What are we talking about next week, Francesco?
Francesco Belcastro 44:10
So it's interesting because we stay in the Lusophone area. And we talk about a completely different topic, because next week is gonna be Luisa Turbino Torres and you guys will correct my not correct Portuguese pronunciation if you want to. And the topic is female fans' activism in Brazil. So we stay in the Lusophone area, the Portuguese speaking area but we change topic and country so I'm really to look forward to.
Guy Burton 44:42
Yeah well... That looks... I am looking forward to that. So great. Well thank you Francesco for that and again thank you Miguel for taking the time to talk to us. And Francesco, I'll see you again next week then.