And then they drew him a picture
The interview given by Pedro Proença yesterday to El País brought no extraordinary revelations. The Portuguese League’s President’s views in favour of a more equitable distribution of TV rights revenues were already known, it was understood that the project for the integration of B teams in the II Liga is part of a plan to make our League one of the strongest in Europe in the youth development cluster and there was an approximation to Spain that went even too far, with all the praise for Javier Tebas, his Spanish counterpart, and a verbal debauchery unusual in the former referee’s speech, when he spoke of the Superliga as the product of “an outspoken mind”. There will have been some news when, not being scared by Messi, Proença assumed that Portugal wants to move ahead of France in the UEFA club rankings. Not on purpose, at night, FC Paços de Ferreira and Santa Clara have drawn him a picture of how this may be possible.
I do not join the weeping choir of those who spend their days destroying everything that is done in Portuguese football. Yesterday we kicked off another edition of the Revelation League, an interesting project that, added to the presence of B teams in the II Liga and even in Liga 3, inaugurated this year, gives younger players the possibility to raise their competitive levels. Jorge Jesus never tires of saying that Portuguese coaches are the best in the world — this year he added the Argentines, probably because he reflected on the time he spent in Brazil — and it is true that we have a new generation of coaches with increasingly solidified bases, which allows those who have more brilliance to stand out even more. Players continue to be born at an impressive pace, be they the Portuguese or the ones we scout in peripheral markets, such as the Brazilian. It is true that we need to reduce the gap between those who make the most money with the broadcasts of a competition that is everyone’s — the ratio of one to 15, announced by Proença, is pornographic, even compared to the one to 3,2 practiced by UEFA in the group stage of the Champions League –, but not even that has prevented this from being a good year for Portuguese teams in the preliminary qualifiers of European competitions.
The three wins achieved this week by Benfica, FC Paços de Ferreira and Santa Clara, already against opponents from the Netherlands, England and Serbia, added to the four that had already been accomplished by the Azoreans, to the two the Lisbon Eagles got against Spartak and another by the Beavers — and what a pity it as that Paços lost in Ireland, when they already had settled the tie against Larne. Our teams have so far won ten of the eleven games they played in the preliminary rounds, implying that the creation of the UEFA Conference League, with more games to weaker League teams, ends up favouring the Portuguese accounting. All these successes are added to the eight bonus points already awarded to Sporting and FC Porto for their presence in the Group Stage of the Champions League — and Benfica can add four more if they get there, with AS Monaco’s life much more difficult, because they lost at home to Shakhtar. Conclusion: also aided by the fact that the 2016/17 season no longer counts, Portugal has reduced at a glance the disadvantage to France in the UEFA ranking from 7.532 points to 0,032 points, which means that the overtaking can be made as early as next week, whether Paços and Santa Clara go ahead or not, probably being enough that Benfica reaches the Champions League and AS Monaco do not.
Exciting? Not really. And it is not because Tottenham have presented a reserve team against Paços or Partizan comes from the Serbian League, which is 12th in the rankings. It is really because we need to be told that even if they are overrun by us in the ranking’s mathematical expression, the French still beat us at everything else. They can attract Messis and Neymars — which is not as much explained by football as it is by Qatar’s billionaires’ choice or by Paris’ cosmopolitanism, which neither Lisbon nor Porto have. They are regularly spoken of in the media around the world, by pundits in international football programs that continue to ignore the Portuguese League. They also have a breathable environment in football, enhanced by the revelation of interesting stories and not dammaged by the toxic waste that is continually produced in Portugal about the sterile controversies that fill our media space. Centralising television rights and a more equitable distribution of revenue are part of the problem. Although it may seem that, there, the League is just hitchhiking from clubs and the Portuguese Federation, a firm bet on the youth development cluster is also a good idea — which will for sure have positive repercussions in sports results, besides helping in finance.
But much more needs to be done.
It takes more than understanding why Rio Ave’s communications director, Vítor Ramos, had complained for days about the lack of media monitoring of II Liga clubs. In the face of news about clashes between supporters outside the fan ID card restricted areas, it takes more than tell everyone to “get used to it”, because that is what the Government wants. It takes more than justify a match schedule with terrible hours with the notion that it depends on the will of the television operator.
It is necessary to intervene — and Proença has to obliterate once and for all the idea that his hands and feet are tied, either because the clubs do not want intervention, because the Government wants otherwise, because the FPF is against, because Sport TV does not want things to happen…
Months ago, in my live stream Futebol de Verdade (Monday to Friday, 12h30 GMT, at my website), a spectator made a masterful comment. “Letting the clubs run the League is like letting the kids run day care,” he wrote. I entirely subscribe this statement. And the truth is this: as good a result as clubs do in international competitions, boosting us in the UEFA rankings, as much as our sixth (or fifth) place is better than what the country would justify, no matter how many young players we create, develop and transfer abroad for a few million euros, real growth will always depend on our action. And the League needs to act.
Último Passe is a daily commentary about Football written Monday to Friday by Portuguese Journalist and TV Pundit António Tadeia and is available in its original version at antoniotadeia.com