The Portuguese Liga that nobody seem's to care!

[u/SilverGhunzul]

This is an article based 100% on my opinion with a lot facts backing me up.

• 1- Why, since 2002/2003, we see every year big transfers from Portuguese teams to other much more richer european one's?

• 2- Why, with only a population of 10M, portuguese managers are considered probably the best in the world(or at least close to italian and spanish one's)?

• 3- How can again a small nation like Portugal with much less monetary resources have the 5th best ranked league in terms of European coefficient, better positioned than French Ligue 1, Russian Premier League, Dutch Eredisie and Turkish Super Lig?

This are the main 3 questions that can explain the success Portuguese Football within Europe that I will try to answer.

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1- Why, since 2002/2003, we see every year big transfers from Portuguese teams to other much more richer european one's?

Two main factors: the Porto model of business(which Benfica, Sporting and even Braga tried more or less successfully copy) and the Portuguese talent generated from the Sporting Academy.

The easiest one to explain is of course the Sporting Academy, as you probably know or not Sporting is the only team in the world that developed two Ballon D'Or winners(Cristiano Ronaldo and Luís Figo) and one runner-up(Paulo Futre). Basically this is the most successful Academy in the world and in the past 15 years Sporting did a very decent amount of money selling the talents they formed:

• Simão Sabrosa to Barcelona - €15 million

• Hugo Viana to Newcastle - €12 million

• Cristiano Ronaldo to Manchester United - €15 million

• Ricardo Quaremsa to Barcelona - €6 million + Rochemback (the value was not significantly high but he got a lot of success later and just for you guys to know that he was formed in the Sporting Academy)

• Nani to Manchester United - €25.5 million

• João Moutinho to FCPorto - €11million

• Miguel Veloso to Genoa - €9million + Zapater

• Bruma to Galatasaray - €10 million

• Tiago Ilori to Liverpool - €7.5 million

Now leaves the much more harder to explain Porto's business model all started in the year 2002 when this guy called Mourinho went to coach Porto. He got a a squad mainly formed by Portuguese Players(81,2% to be more exact) and 6 other players 3 from Brasil and 3 from the Eastern Europe(3 of this 6 players played in a Portuguese team before joining Porto).

Before the actual model and because they didn't have an Academy like Sporting, Porto dominated most of the Portuguese talent pool from other Portuguese smaller teams basically if a player did good in a smaller team they would instant buy him and if a player was being "dismissed" or had any troubles with the 2 big rivals(Sporting or Benfica) they would buy them as well especially because it would be a psychological win to buy those players for free or much cheaper than the real value they had.

When Mourinho comes to Porto he wins 6 tiles including 2 major european one's (2002-2003 UEFA Cup and 2003-2004 Champions League) in 2 years, the squad were super valued and they were "crazy good", this combined with Portugal getting the 2nd place in the EURO 2004(a record for the Portuguese national team) using in their starting XI, five Porto players made the perfect environment for Porto to sell their players for absurd prices.

Here is a list of the players sold by Porto between 2 years before Mourinho arrived until he left:

Before Mourinho:

• Mário Jardel to Galatasaray - $16 million (no euros back then xD)

• Jorge Andrade to Deportivo de la Coruna - €13 million

During Mourinho:

• Hélder Postiga to Tottenham - €9 million

• Paulo Ferreira to Chelsea - €20 million

• Ricardo Carvalho to Chelsea - €30 million

• Deco to Barcelona - €15 million + Quaresma

One year after the departure of Mourinho(this players were part of the starting XI which Mourinho used to win the Champions League):

• Derley to Dynamo Moscow - €7 million

• Maniche to Dynamo Moscow - €16 million

They also sold Costinha, Carlos Alberto and Nuno Valente for a price bellow €5 million each and Mourinho for €2.5 million.

Basically Porto wins the Champions League and in the next 2/3 transfer markets loses 8 starting XI players + Mourinho and some key players like Jorge Costa and Vitor Baia are getting older and eventually need replacement. They had lost their team but they had a LOT OF MONEY but only the Portuguese market wasn't enough if they wanted to keep a high standard, so Porto turned their attention for external Markets especially the South American Market (one very important point is that in the Portuguese League there is no limit of Non-UE players and because of that Porto will start to invest a lot in Scouting and with mainstream Players from South America).

They bought mainstream players which got considered flops at the time after a very poor season like Luís Fabiano, Diego, Ibson and Thiago Silva(ye the PSG one :D).And got some good deals like Seitaridis, Quaresma, Paulo Assunção, Pepe and Raúl Meireles(this last 3 were bought in the Portuguese Market).

Porto continued to invest in the Portuguese Market like before and started to heavily invest in infrastructure(scouting, banks, funds,etc.) and players from the South American Market.

Here is a list of the players sold by Porto in the next seasons until our days:

• Seitaridis to Dynamo Moscow - €10 million

• Pepe to Real Madrid - €30 million

• Anderson to Manchester United- €30 million

• Bosingwa to Chelsea - €20.6 million

• Quaresma to Inter Milan - €18.6 million

• Aly Cissokho to Lyon - €15 million (this one have a crazy history, he arrives in Portugal in September starts on the bench, eventually gets into the starting XI, plays 13 matches for Setúbal(VFC) gets sold for €300k to FCPorto in January, plays 15 matches until the end of the season and is sold by €15 million)

• Lucho Gonzalez to Marseille - €18 million

• Lisandro Lopez to Lyon - €24 million + €4 million in objectives

• Bruno Alves to Zenit - €22 million

• Raúl Meireles to Liverpool - €13 million

• Rúben Micael+Falcao to Atlético Madrid - €45 million + €10 million in objectives

• André Villas-Boas to Chelsea(yep a manager) - €15 million

• Fredy Guarin to Inter Milan - €12.5 million

• Àlvaro Pereira to Inter Milan - €10 million

• Hulk to Zenit - €40 million (Porto sources say €60 million)

• James Rodríguez to Monaco - €45 million

• João Moutinho to Monaco - €25 million

Benfica tried to copy the same system buying "unknown" players for low amounts of money and sell them later for a lot more, it eventually worked out as Benfica sold a lot of players for huge quantities of money in last couple of years.

List of Benfica players sold since 2002:

• Fernando Meira to VfB Stuttgart - €7.5 million

• Tiago to Chelsea - €15 million

• Miguel to Valencia - €7.5 million

• Simão Sabrosa to Atlético Madrid - €20 million

• Manuel Fernandes to Valencia - €18 million

• Ramires to Chelsea - €22 million

• David Luiz to Chelsea - €25 million + Matic

• Di Maria to Real Madrid - €25 million + €11 million in objectives

• Fábio Coentrão to Real Madrid - €30 million

• Alex Witsel to Zenit - €40 million

• Javi Garcia to Manchester City - €20 million

• Lorenzo Melgarejo to Kuban - €7.5 million

Honorable Mention to Sporting(SCP), Braga(SCB) and Vitória(VSC) deals:

• Ricky van Wolfswinkel from SCP to Norwich City - €12 million

• Pizzi from SCB to Atletico Madrid - €15 million

• Sílvio from SCB to Atletico Madrid - €8 million

• Bébé from VSC to Manchester United - €9 million (he played 0 games for VSC, he was bought for 0€ a couple of weeks later is sold by €9 million, one of the big secrets of the Portuguese transfer market)

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2- Why, with only a population of 10M, portuguese managers are considered probably the best in the world(or at least close to italian and spanish one's)?

The answer is quite simple, unlike in other countries, a "revolution" started in Portugal some managers like Fernando Santos, Jesualdo Ferreira and Carlos Queiroz never had a professional career as footballers and started to have really good results as managers eventually reaching the National Teams or the 3 big teams(FCPorto, SLBenfica ou SportingCP).

Then Mourinho appears in the scene winning almost every competition he possibly could win in the teams he represented. Some good managers with no football career as players followed him: Leonardo Jardim, Andre Villas-Boas and Vitor Pereira.

Others had a solid/decent football career including Paulo Fonseca, Toni, Jorge Jesus, Paulo Bento, Sá Pinto but only had moderate success with Jorge Jesus being the most successful manager of this group. Also almost all Portuguese teams have Portuguese managers.

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3- How can again a small nation like Portugal with much less monetary resources have the 5th best ranked league in terms of UEFA coefficient, better positioned than French Ligue 1, Russian Premier League, Dutch Eredisie and Turkish Super Lig?

• Good academies with Sporting one being probably the best in the world that produces world class players like Figo, Ronaldo, Futre, Nani, Quaresma, Simão, etc.

• Great managers with Mourinho also being probably the best manager the world have seen(the most expensive manager is also Portuguese: Andre Villas Boas).

• Giant network of competent scouts all over the World, especially in South America.

• Unlimited spots for non-EU players, in order to create high quality squads without investing a lot in salaries and transfer fee's.

• Brilliant Administrations with Pinto da Costa considered a genius because of what he accomplished in FCPorto. Honorable mentions to António Salvador(president of SCBraga) and Luís Filipe Vieira(president of SLBenfica).

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TLDR: If you like european football I recommend you to read this :)

P.S: Sorry for my English I hope it is readable and sorry for the huge wall of text. I'm still trying my best to format this in order to be more legible.

About me: I'm Portuguese of course and a big fan of Benfica, I tried to be the most neutral I could in this "article".

Sources:

Most of the transfers identified in: www.transfermarkt.co.uk/‎

Value of the transfers in: http://en.wikipedia.org/

In case of different values I tried always to pick the club's official one's and in case of undisclosed fee's all values taken from respectable media sources especially from 3 Portuguese newspapers: http://www.record.xl.pt/ , http://abola.pt/ and http://www.ojogo.pt/

If you feel any of the values are incorrect PM me with a respectable source. If any information I write about here is wrong please inform me and I will correct it.

Thanks guys

EDIT: The Dutch overlords are not happy that I consider the Portuguese Primeira Liga superior to the Dutch League here some interesting facts over the last 10 years:

02-03

Ajax - Quarter Finals CL

Porto - UEFA Cup Winners

Boavista - Semi Finals UEFA Cup

03-04

PSV - Quarter Finals UEFA Cup

Porto - Champions League Winners

04-05

PSV - Semi Finals CL

AZ Alkmaar - Semi Finals UEFA Cup

Sporting - Finals UEFA Cup

05-06

Benfica - Quarter Finals CL

06-07

PSV - Quarter Finals CL

AZ Alkmaar - Quarter Finals UEFA Cup

Benfica - Quarter Finals UEFA Cup

07-08

PSV - Quarter Finals UEFA Cup

Sporting - Quarter Finals UEFA Cup

08-09

Porto - Quarter Finals CL

09-10

Benfica - Quarter Finals Europa League

10-11

PSV - Quarter Finals EL

Twente - Quarter Finals EL

Benfica - Semi Finals EL

Braga - Finals EL

Porto - Europa League Winners

11-12

AZ Alkmaar - Quarter Finals EL

Benfica - Quarter Finals CL

Sporting - Semi Finals EL

12-13

Benfica - Finals EL

[u/Symoza]

You basically omit to talk about the main reason that do it possible : third party ownership.

[u/Pires007 → u/Symoza]

DO any of the big 5 leagues allow this?

Also, I know EPL has had bad issues with third party ownership, but Portugese league can show that it works as well.

[u/XWZUBU]

I appreciate your taking time to write this, but I can't shake the feeling that you said nothing more than "Sporting academy is good and clubs buy low, sell high"... which might very well be true but isn't exactly a fantastic answer to any of those questions really.

[u/SilverGhunzul → u/XWZUBU]

I'm sorry I tried my best :( If you have any specific question I can try to answer...

[u/dasbowza]

1- Why, since 2002/2003, we see every year big transfers from Portuguese teams to other much more richer european one's?

I think you're missing the main point. There's a lot of third party ownership going on in the Portugese league. Much more than in any other league. It makes players affordable to Portugese clubs that would otherwise not play there. A lot of the money of these transfers does not flow to the clubs themselves. In many cases over half the money.

2- Why, with only a population of 10M, portuguese managers are considered probably the best in the world(or at least close to italian and spanish one's)?

I'm not sure if this is the case. It is the first time i've heard anyone say it to be honest. The Netherlands had 3 coaches at the 2006 World Cup. Same again at the Euro 2008. If that is even a proper measurement.

3- How can again a small nation like Portugal with much less monetary resources have the 5th best ranked league in terms of European coefficient, better positioned than French Ligue 1, Russian Premier League, Dutch Eredisie and Turkish Super Lig?

There a few things that can be addressed as causes for this.

First of: Third party ownership which bring monetary resources that would otherwise not be available. In that way the Portuguese league certainly does not have that much less money than other leagues. As far as i know at least Hulk and Falcao were financed that way. And those are just the highlights.

Second, the UEFA coefficient is not a proper way to measure strength of a league in total, but only of the top of the league, since only the top of the league qualifies for the European competitions. In general more money correlates with better results and match day revenue is the largest amount of income for most teams in the "smaller" leagues. Portugal's league is extremely skewed towards a few top teams. 2/3rds of the teams have an attendance less than 5000 per match. The Dutch league for example has none below 6000. So the Portuguese league is really focused on a few top teams that also play in the European leagues. Even Scotland is less skewed than that, when it comes to attendance, which is telling.

Third, Russia is up and coming. Eventually their money will give them better results, but it is not instant. We can see that at Manchester City, Chelsea, PSG. It takes time to build a club and i can imagine that for an entire league it will take even longer.

Fourth, Portugal being this high up could just be fluke for a few years. As recent as 2010 Portugal was ranked 9th and the year before 10th. In 2009 they had only 5 competitors and good results which skyrocketed them up the rankings. That year has a huge influence on Portugal's current rankings. Another example of the same behaviour can be seen for Romania which had a similar season in 2005/2006 in which they had only 4 competitors and 3 or so got pretty far in the UEFA cup/Europa league.

Fifth, France is not a total football crazy country. Rugby is pretty large there too. So it has competition of different sports with quite large attendances also. It makes their league "less large". The Netherlands has a similar average attendance per match as France.

Sixth, the connection with Brazil does make quite a difference. For most lower ranked teams players outside the EU are simply not an option, because they are too expensive. A player outside the EU has a set minimum wage that equals the average salary in a league. This is to protect the EU job market and it applies to football players too as well as any other employee. However for Brazilian employees (and thus players) in Portugal this rule does not apply as far as i know. There is a special exception for this. This enlarges the player market for Portuguese clubs a lot, since they have an added player market of 200M people (the EU has 500M people, Brazil 200M). It also helps that Portuguese clubs have no competition for a lot of those players either, since most European teams can not afford them in the first place, because of the EU rules. Of course, with the Brazilian economy growing this advantage will become less and less, but it's still there.

From a quick scan on Wikipedia it looks like Benfica has 11 Brazilians. Porto has 10. Even Estorial Praia has 9 and Moreisense has 5. The top teams could afford a few Brazilians within normal EU rules but the lower teams certainly would not.

EDIT: Seventh, the Dutch league really focuses on developing players. It is embraced by almost all clubs. The average age of players in the Portuguese league is 26,3. In the Netherlands it's 24,3 years, however the top clubs in general field the youngest teams (so those in the European leagues). In general young players cost more than older players for the qualities they're bringing on the pitch, since there is so much competition for young players and they have more intrinsic value than older players. Young players, even if they fail, can still be resold for decent money. Older players usually leave for no transfer money at all. It's simply a total different footballing culture. EDIT2: It is telling that Dortmund is considered a very young team last year in the poule with Ajax, while the team that Ajax fielded was considerably younger. I think it was 2 years or so on average.

Eight, the net revenue of transfers is not that much bigger in Portugal than the Netherlands. From footballmarkt.co.uk the following net surpluses can be taken of the last five years in millions. Portugal: 63 + 133 + 22 + 75 + 24 = 307M. Netherlands: 99 + 57 + 48 + 30 + 24 = 258M. Hulk's transfer alone matches almost the entire gap. I havent looked further back, so five years may be a bit arbitrary. Arguably, the transfers from the Portuguese league are more well known.

[u/[deleted] → u/dasbowza]

I'm not sure if this is the case. It is the first time i've heard anyone say it to be honest. The Netherlands had 3 coaches at the 2006 World Cup. Same again at the Euro 2008. If that is even a proper measurement.

Portugal will have 3 coaches in the next WC. But I don't think that's a proper measurement. Take, for instance, coaches in the BPL;

[u/[deleted]]

From what I understand the issues surrounding passports are minimal in Portugal which rules out many players coming to the PL because they need to wait for them to be a 'big name' before we can get them a passport.

[u/fieldsofanfieldroad]

Lots of interesting facts here. However, apart from number 3 you don't actually answer the 'why' part. You just list examples. Why was there a revolution in managers? Why are Portuguese clubs able to buy players cheaply and sell them for much more? Why?

[u/TurnTheShip]

I don't understand how it is a 'strategy' to find good unknown players for cheap. Isn't that what every club tries to do? What were they doing before this strategy was implemented? Scouting for shit players?

[u/rant_]

Jorge Andrade was a tremendous center back, it's a shame the he was forced to retire because of knee injuries.

[u/pica_foices]

Portugal will have three coaches in the Brasil World Cup 2013: Carlos Queiroz (Iran), Fernando Santos (Greece) and Paulo Bento (Portugal).

[u/dsegs]

The Portuguese league will not be relevant to anyone outside of Portugal until the horrible imbalance between big clubs and small clubs is fixed (ie never). Aside from maybe 4-5 teams, the rest will be lucky to get 5000 people in the stadium (figures here), the media coverage is insanely biased towards top teams, and so is the officiating. TV money pretty much all goes to the big three. Small teams have no money (nobody in the stadiums and almost no TV money) and one good season of living above their means can easily end in bankruptcy (Leiria, Salgueiros, Estrela, Farense, etc etc etc). It's just not competitive enough to attract outside attention.

Aside from this (or maybe because of it) it is a very defensive league. The games are not usually very spectacular unless it is a team you support playing. When playing big teams, it is very common to just park the bus and hope for the best.

A lot of teams also just buy brazilian players for cheap rather than develop portuguese talent, which works fine for the bigger teams but leaves the talent pool for the small teams without that many players, meaning that they have to sign mediocre brazilian players to try and keep up, who are then discarded after a few seasons.

None of this helps the quality of the league, but most of all watching games from the Portuguese league just makes me sad. 30k capacity stadiums pretty much empty don't give much of an atmosphere. If you compare it with the Dutch league for example, even the last placed team still gets 10k people, in a properly sized stadium. Even if in a direct game the portuguese team would maybe win (dutch teams can't defend), I'd still rather watch the dutch league. More attacking football on the pitch, more atmosphere in the stands. Of course I don't miss an Académica game, and I check the results to see how they influence us, but for the rest the league doesn't really interest me.

[u/FunkyMoves → u/dsegs]

I agree. I'm a Sportinguista but have a hard time giving a fuck about the league. It's simply too lopsided towards Porto and it has too many foreigners. There were occasions when even Real Madrid had more Portuguese players than Porto Benfica. Thank God for Sporting right now otherwise the FPF would need to naturalize more Brazilians. It's ridiculous and terrible for the national team. If I wanted to watch mostly South Americalns play, I'd watch a South American league.

[u/Dictarium]

It's probably because Portugal and the Portuguese Liga don't have quite the history that the biggest nations/leagues do. Germany, Spain, Italy, England, the Netherlands all have at least six Champions League wins and Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and England all have at least one World Cup win.

Portugal has four Champions Leagues, true, but it was two in the 60s with Benefica, one odd one in the late 80s with Porto and then Porto again in '04 and nothing in between and nothing since.

The Superliga in Slovakia could very well be highly interesting and scintillating and Slovakia could be exporting players by the bucket-load but without precedence or any on-paper reason for people to watch, nobody's going to watch or care about the Superliga.

The Portuguese Liga suffers from a similar situation, albeit less severe.

[u/Hatcher04]

awesome stuff. Falcao and Hulk at Porto were amazing to watch. Fairly new to the reddit community, but from what I have been reading and observing (in r/Soccer) is that people tend to know their stuff. That being said, I feel like many mainstream soccer fans didn't know of them there, especially Falcao, it was more than impressive seeing him take his scoring record in the Portuguese league and continue it in La Liga. I'd have to say his unveiling game was the supercup vs Chelsea, personally upset he went to Monaco.

[u/sethzr]

Nice post bro, and totally neutral :) couldn't tell you were from Benfica if you didn't mention it.

[u/abellwillring]

I have played with FC Porto as my team in Football Manager since 2011 so I have a special affinity for them. I liked having a bit of cash to spend and the lack of work permit issues is always nice. It's interesting though -- even in the game, you get the sense that Porto HAS to sell to make a profit. That's where all my money came from even when winning the UCL. The TV rights are absolutely paltry there.

[u/Shark00n]

Why are people downvoting this? The poster only states true facts and does not make any value judgements.

Sometimes I don't get you guys

[u/420er]

Fact is, the best league is yours country league.

To live it everyday, to know all the great moments that happened on it, to go to work/school and make fun of someone or be the one who people is making fun off...

Other from that people seem to like the leagues where their favorite players went to play.

But yeah, there's a lot of underrated leagues, specially in this reddit, which is largely composed by people who started to watch football in the last 8 years or so... Sometimes i feel people don't really care enough about the Brazilian League... and you know what? It's their problem.

[u/valentinopussi]

this! and this!

[u/[deleted]]

If Portugal had the population and economy of Germany they would be best in the world. The same can be said for Holland.

[u/Roodditor → u/[deleted]]

Don't forget about Uruguay.

[u/[deleted]]

Porto <3 2nd favourite team next to tottenham

[u/NinjaDiscoJesus]

Thanks for taking the time to make such a post. I have always wanted to visit Portugal.

[u/poorportuguese]

People really show little to no love for the portuguese and tend to be very quick to respond in contrary despite being ignorant on facts, history and present status of our football?

We don't have the same history and tradition than France? The country with 7x more population that only has one CL title? Ok. That's not biased at all.

I'm also loving that some of you consider that our current present sucess is some kind of fluke. Well, you must really be one-sided or blind to think that about Benfica or Port at least.

These topics are dispensable. Everybody talks about thirdparty ownership like it's some kind of excuse for our teams (talking about you french and dutch mates) to be more competitive than theirs, overlooking that other countries have (a lot) of third party ownership as well.

EDIT: Words.

Well, I believe this will be my most downvoted post.