Jason Pereira
I’ll say this now. Portuguese teams have no chance of winning the Champions League this year. Nor did they have a chance the year before this, or the year before that… and so on.
But wait- did Porto not win the Champions League in 2004/05? Obviously this shows my assumption is wrong. Portuguese teams have never been given much of a chance by the media, which is what I was trying to illustrate in my first few sentences- they play in an inferior league than the English Premiership, Spanish La Liga and Italian Serie A; thus they also have inferior players and a lesser amount of money to spend on the team.
While Portuguese teams cannot financially compete with the likes of Real Madrid, Arsenal and Manchester United, they will always have a chance with the Champions League being a knockout competition, and should they manage to get a positive result away from home they will feel confident even if a small win was needed in Portugal.
In the Portuguese Liga there are three big clubs, with the other teams generally not good enough to compete for the Champions League places. The "Big 3" consists of FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon. As Portuguese clubs cannot afford to purchase the best players in the world, they have to breed their own- the likes of Nani, Anderson, Cristiano Ronaldo and Simao have all come from those clubs.
These players can put in stellar performances on the pitch, and when sold will bring in millions of dollars to help the club strengthen on and off the pitch. Nani and Anderson went for a fee that could reach £17 million each, while both Ronaldo and Simao cost upwards of £10 million for Manchester United and Atletico Madrid respectively. These four players are amongst some of the best emerging young players in the football world, and they greatly helped their Portuguese clubs- even for the short amount of time that they were there.
This year all of the "Big 3" qualified for the UEFA Champions League, which is a major boost to Portuguese football. Despite the losses of quite a few key players –Manuel Fernandes, Ricardo, Pepe and Deco have all left the club in the last few years- the Portuguese league stays competitive, with last year’s title being fiercely fought out between the "Big 3". Porto came out on top by just one point, with Benfica a further point behind Sporting (who picked up the Portuguese Cup).
The league manages to stay competitive as all sides will lose some of their best players each year- there are still the likes of Quaresma and Lucho Gonzalez plying their trade in the Portuguese Liga though, so some decent players exist. Apart from that, other teams are not that good- so you will see a lot of thrashings, a lot of goals and therefore a lot of excitement. To further analyse whether Portuguese teams will do well in the Champions League this year, we will have to take a closer look at the Big 3’s squads.
Porto is in my opinion the team that will do best; yes, they did lose Anderson in the summer however they managed to keep hold of most of their other star players. Porto has a decent amount of quality in the team even including star players Quaresma and Gonzalez- players like Bosingwa, Assuncao and Postiga are all good players to have around. They also have the Brazilian Helton as their goalkeeper, a player who has contributed to their large amount of clean sheets in the last few years.
Despite finishing third and losing the likes of Manuel Fernandes and Simao Sabrosa to Valencia and Atletico Madrid respectively, Benfica can cause an upset on their day- as they showed a few years ago when they were responsible for knocking Manchester United out of the Champions League. Benfica have opted to aim for youth, and they bought in Argentine winger Angel di Maria (a player wanted by Arsenal) and American superstar Freddy Adu in the summer. This adds to a squad with Nuno Gomes and Rui Costa, so there definitely are players capable of causing problems in the team.
Sporting Lisbon have lost two dynamic wingers in recent years; first Cristiano Ronaldo went to Manchester United then he was joined there by Nani during this summer transfer window. Sporting Lisbon have an excellent youth academy that will surely produce one or two gems this season.
Although they lost quite a few players in the summer they did bring in a few as well from various teams around the world. Midfielders Miguel Veloso and Joao Moutinho have been linked with the likes of Arsenal and Manchester United in recent years, while Yannick Djalo and Liedson are capable of scoring goals when needed.
To conclude: while I don’t think Portuguese teams will win it this year they are certainly capable of doing so, as in cup competitions anything can happen. The trio will all hope to qualify from their groups, and once they do that then they can start looking on to bigger and better things.
