Filipe Sena
The truth was brought to the surface in Portuguese football recently when the league’s court announced their decision relating to the famous ‘Final Whistle’ trial which involved three Superliga clubs, Uniao de Leiria, Boavista and this season’s champions, FC Porto.
For those of you who don’t know what this trial was all about, it all started when corruption suspicions over some third league clubs led to several investigations involving some of the biggest names and people from all the leagues in portugal, including the now convicted presidents of Porto, Leiria and Boavista.
The "Final Whistle" arrived as the sports version of the major "Golden Whistle" civic trial (by civic, i mean held in a civil court, outside the league’s organisation). While the "Golden Whistle" is still in the process of investigation and hearings phase, the "Final whistle" was brought to trial this week, due to pressures from the clubs to re-estabilish the credibility of the Portuguese football league.
We can pretty much compair these trials to the Italian "Calciopoli" case, where Fiorentina, AC Milan and Juventus where all penalised due to proven attempts to arrange results.
The commission charged with running the "Final Whistle" trial considered proven all the accusations against the clubs and referees accused and punished them allseverely:
– U.Leiria’s president was punished with a 1 year suspension from all sports activities. The club was also fined €40,000.<
– Boavista were relegated from the Superleague and fined €180,000. Former President João Loureiro was suspended for 4 years from all sports activities.
– FC Porto was stripped of 6 points from this year’s Superleague and fined €150,000. President Pinto da Costa was suspended for 2 years from all sports activities and penalised with a €10,000 fine.
– Augusto Duarte, the referee guilty of corruption, will be suspended for the next 6 years. This effectively means that his career is over as he has only another 2 years before he reaches the age at which he must retire.
– 5 other referees where punished with suspensions ranging between four and two and a half years. Included in this group was international referee Martins dos Santos.
The defendants have the right to appeal against this decision, and, from their statements to the press, only FC Porto won’t appeal. Therefore Porto will accept the 6 point penalty for this season.
On the other hand, Pinto da Costa will appeal his suspension, in an attempt to preserve FC Porto’s reputation.
Needless to say that, considering the current state of these teams, Boavista and Leiria will suffer great difficulty for the next few years without any money available to invest in the squad, little sympathy from fans or supporters and possibly bankruptcy around the corner. The future will not be pretty.
Not everyone loses out though since it’s good news for the other teams who where at risk of relegation, since this year’s league only relegates 2 teams – Boavista and Leiria.
Added to this situation, the newly elected Boavista president, Joaquim Teixeira, has decided to abandon the club claiming difficult working conditions. Boavista owes over two and a half months worth of salary to it’s employees (players, coaches, administrative staff, etc…) and has considerable debts to social security and various suppliers.
