Portuguese football season 2023-24

[rpo.castro]

One game with zero shots can happen everywhere, but the number of goals per game is the highest in decades, and higher than other top-10 leagues. The attendances in Portugal are way lower than Premier League, Bundesliga, etc..., no one is denying that, but unlike what you said even those have been recovering slightly this year, with an over 12 thousand average for now, while it was under 10 thousand a few years ago
The financial difficulties are a real issue even if you list has most of those teams having their problems outside the top division (and are therefore not affected by the number of teams there) and you're really forcing some of those "strugglers" (Tondela and Rio Ave missed one payment and were punished, but they're not in a systemic bad situation), but the thing is they're an issue basically EVERYWHERE outside the richest leagues, we're not the exception. Look at Romania, look at Rangers in Scotland, which was one of the top clubs in a 12-club league like what you propose, and in a way is even more serious than problems in a few lower teams

There are some points of your previous statements that I don't get the point:
a) number of goals as to measure if the league is competitive or healthy. If we expand the league, or the teams become weaker and we get more 4-0, 5-0 results, the number of goals per game will increase right? And in completely amateurs levels (and I mean something like Inatel with 40 years old guys) its very common results of 8-2, 8-5, and a team winning by 4 and losing by 5 the next one. Is this the most competitive league in the world or the number of goals hasn't relevance or at least by itself to measure how competitive a league is, even less, how healthy and sustainable it is?

b) Does "look at A league or B league they aren't better" argument is valid? If you have a problem, lets say your house is on fire, its valid that the firemen say "House A and house B are also on fire, some way worse so just chill and do nothing"? How having leagues with problems makes my league OK and I don't need to make changes to prevent decline and to make it more sustainable and competitive?

Getting into the discussion, I looked at the attendances numbers and first of all, two considerations: league still on going so numbers will still change especially with big games still to play, and secondly the overall sum means little.
I went to ligaportugal website and the data about attendances is very different from what you posted above. So far the average is 12,0001 while past season the overall average was 11,621, so an increase of 380 spectators per match. But as I said, an overall average tells you very little.
Now if you look at the individual attendances of each club you will notice that attendances at sporting increase 9,097 per match, the second biggest increase is Boavista with 2,341. 9 clubs have increased, 7 with values between +50 and +786. 6 clubs have decreased and 3 are new.

And whats the value of attendances?
6 clubs below 3000 people per match. And in this value and next we must take account that at least when they receive benfica their attendance is really high with porto and sporting also above average, so this mean that and average of 3000 in fact means a lot of matches around 1000-2000 people, in I Liga.

More 5 between 3000 and 5000 on average. 11 of 18 clubs don't have an average higher than 5000 people, knowing what I ve stated just above. And the 12th club average is just 5,017 (now).
Boavista 8k, Braga15k, Gumarães 16k and than Porto 37k, Sporting 38k and benfica 56k.

That is the full pictures of the league. Doesn't look a competitive league with people filling the stadiums, generating revenue for the clubs and sponsors does it? Most of the matches are of low quality and thats why they are in empty stadiums and clubs get barely no money for those matches (ticketing or tv). The numbers of benfica, porto and sporting are so big that they by themselves make the average look good comparing to the other leagues.

When new tv deals were signed (some by Meo some by NOS) at the start of the season there were 2 clubs with no agreement: one refused the low valued proposed, and the other didn't get any offer. Only before the 2nd matchday the last one got a deal. One was Moreirense and I can't remember the other https://www.guimaraesdigital.pt/index.p ... elevisivos

Getting back to clubs getting bankrupcy: most if not all got their porblems when in I Liga. Of course they were keeping running, increasing the debts and since they were in I Liga they would get loans to finance their unsustainable business. When they got demoted, they don't get access to more credit and they fall but the problem wasn't the relegation, the problem was years and years of spending more than the revenues. And whe you say that Rio Ave only missed a few payments, you are really clueless about the situation: they would shut down the doors this season if money wasn't injected. They were at the end of the line: https://www.ojogo.pt/1070201398/preside ... nvestidor/
The problems of Rio Ave started in 2018 when the company of former president entered bankrupcy, so Rio Ave has been problems paying wages and taxes since 2018, with EL qualifiers participations amid. Tondela got several transfer markets bans due to debts and unpaid wages. Its not just a few payments. Académica, Setúbal, were know for only paying the first months. Guimarães has been on and off on unpaid wages, most clubs have 2-3 months of delay. This is the picture of our league. Yes with lots of goals, whatever does that means (bad defense) with lots of people following 3 clubs and 10 clubs just waiting to fall.

A good picture:
https://maisfutebol.iol.pt/estudo/anali ... ra-da-uefa

[ngfsmg]

One game with zero shots can happen everywhere, but the number of goals per game is the highest in decades, and higher than other top-10 leagues. The attendances in Portugal are way lower than Premier League, Bundesliga, etc..., no one is denying that, but unlike what you said even those have been recovering slightly this year, with an over 12 thousand average for now, while it was under 10 thousand a few years ago
The financial difficulties are a real issue even if you list has most of those teams having their problems outside the top division (and are therefore not affected by the number of teams there) and you're really forcing some of those "strugglers" (Tondela and Rio Ave missed one payment and were punished, but they're not in a systemic bad situation), but the thing is they're an issue basically EVERYWHERE outside the richest leagues, we're not the exception. Look at Romania, look at Rangers in Scotland, which was one of the top clubs in a 12-club league like what you propose, and in a way is even more serious than problems in a few lower teams

There are some points of your previous statements that I don't get the point:
a) number of goals as to measure if the league is competitive or healthy. If we expand the league, or the teams become weaker and we get more 4-0, 5-0 results, the number of goals per game will increase right? And in completely amateurs levels (and I mean something like Inatel with 40 years old guys) its very common results of 8-2, 8-5, and a team winning by 4 and losing by 5 the next one. Is this the most competitive league in the world or the number of goals hasn't relevance or at least by itself to measure how competitive a league is, even less, how healthy and sustainable it is?

b) Does "look at A league or B league they aren't better" argument is valid? If you have a problem, lets say your house is on fire, its valid that the firemen say "House A and house B are also on fire, some way worse so just chill and do nothing"? How having leagues with problems makes my league OK and I don't need to make changes to prevent decline and to make it more sustainable and competitive?

Getting into the discussion, I looked at the attendances numbers and first of all, two considerations: league still on going so numbers will still change especially with big games still to play, and secondly the overall sum means little.
I went to ligaportugal website and the data about attendances is very different from what you posted above. So far the average is 12,0001 while past season the overall average was 11,621, so an increase of 380 spectators per match. But as I said, an overall average tells you very little.
Now if you look at the individual attendances of each club you will notice that attendances at sporting increase 9,097 per match, the second biggest increase is Boavista with 2,341. 9 clubs have increased, 7 with values between +50 and +786. 6 clubs have decreased and 3 are new.

And whats the value of attendances?
6 clubs below 3000 people per match. And in this value and next we must take account that at least when they receive benfica their attendance is really high with porto and sporting also above average, so this mean that and average of 3000 in fact means a lot of matches around 1000-2000 people, in I Liga.

More 5 between 3000 and 5000 on average. 11 of 18 clubs don't have an average higher than 5000 people, knowing what I ve stated just above. And the 12th club average is just 5,017 (now).
Boavista 8k, Braga15k, Gumarães 16k and than Porto 37k, Sporting 38k and benfica 56k.

That is the full pictures of the league. Doesn't look a competitive league with people filling the stadiums, generating revenue for the clubs and sponsors does it? Most of the matches are of low quality and thats why they are in empty stadiums and clubs get barely no money for those matches (ticketing or tv). The numbers of benfica, porto and sporting are so big that they by themselves make the average look good comparing to the other leagues.

When new tv deals were signed (some by Meo some by NOS) at the start of the season there were 2 clubs with no agreement: one refused the low valued proposed, and the other didn't get any offer. Only before the 2nd matchday the last one got a deal. One was Moreirense and I can't remember the other https://www.guimaraesdigital.pt/index.p ... elevisivos

Getting back to clubs getting bankrupcy: most if not all got their porblems when in I Liga. Of course they were keeping running, increasing the debts and since they were in I Liga they would get loans to finance their unsustainable business. When they got demoted, they don't get access to more credit and they fall but the problem wasn't the relegation, the problem was years and years of spending more than the revenues. And whe you say that Rio Ave only missed a few payments, you are really clueless about the situation: they would shut down the doors this season if money wasn't injected. They were at the end of the line: https://www.ojogo.pt/1070201398/preside ... nvestidor/
The problems of Rio Ave started in 2018 when the company of former president entered bankrupcy, so Rio Ave has been problems paying wages and taxes since 2018, with EL qualifiers participations amid. Tondela got several transfer markets bans due to debts and unpaid wages. Its not just a few payments. Académica, Setúbal, were know for only paying the first months. Guimarães has been on and off on unpaid wages, most clubs have 2-3 months of delay. This is the picture of our league. Yes with lots of goals, whatever does that means (bad defense) with lots of people following 3 clubs and 10 clubs just waiting to fall.

A good picture:
https://maisfutebol.iol.pt/estudo/anali ... ra-da-uefa

a)No, I'm just saying it's much more enjoyable to watch a Portimonense 3-5 Braga than a Portimonense 0-2 Braga (I say this based on personal experience ). That comment about Inatel is just bad faith, if Portugal was having their usual year filled with 0-0 and 1-0 results you would be comparing us to the Netherlands (a country which is above us in the country ranking, by the way) where the teams do regularly do stuff like winning one game 5-1 and then losing the the next 5-0 and say they are way more exciting

b)But those leagues haven't had better results than us. Like, you say we're poorer than Germany and so we should have fewer clubs, ok, but then the system you propose is used in Austria or Scotland, which are below us in the UEFA ranking and are even less competitive (and boring) than Portugal
Attendances, we lost Marítimo and Paços de Ferreira that were both in the better half of the attendances figures (especially Marítimo, by far the best after the 5 usual suspects) and even then the average still rose a bit, I'd say it's a good sign. I had said it was a SLIGHT improvement, what I meant was that stuff isn't getting worse, not that they are good because they obviously aren't, and you obviously can't expect Rio Ave or Famalicão to have improvements of 3000 spectators per match on their 5000 capacity stadiums...
About debts and unpaid wages: yeah, it's bad, and I never said it wasn't. But it was already like that (I'd say even worse) when your Braga was going to the Europa League final against Porto and we were clearly above France in the ranking, and as I already said it's not exactly rare outside the top leagues, unfortunately. I read your last article and I think things will get better with the centralization of TV rights, but by now it's good that at least games are more entartaining, and a lot of teams score goals against "bad defenses", even if a team like Arsenal had a lot of trouble scoring goals against one of those defences

[rpo.castro]

a)No, I'm just saying it's much more enjoyable to watch a Portimonense 3-5 Braga than a Portimonense 0-2 Braga (I say this based on personal experience ). That comment about Inatel is just bad faith, if Portugal was having their usual year filled with 0-0 and 1-0 results you would be comparing us to the Netherlands (a country which is above us in the country ranking, by the way) where the teams do regularly do stuff like winning one game 5-1 and then losing the the next 5-0 and say they are way more exciting

b)But those leagues haven't had better results than us. Like, you say we're poorer than Germany and so we should have fewer clubs, ok, but then the system you propose is used in Austria or Scotland, which are below us in the UEFA ranking and are even less competitive (and boring) than Portugal
Attendances, we lost Marítimo and Paços de Ferreira that were both in the better half of the attendances figures (especially Marítimo, by far the best after the 5 usual suspects) and even then the average still rose a bit, I'd say it's a good sign. I had said it was a SLIGHT improvement, what I meant was that stuff isn't getting worse, not that they are good because they obviously aren't, and you obviously can't expect Rio Ave or Famalicão to have improvements of 3000 spectators per match on their 5000 capacity stadiums...
About debts and unpaid wages: yeah, it's bad, and I never said it wasn't. But it was already like that (I'd say even worse) when your Braga was going to the Europa League final against Porto and we were clearly above France in the ranking, and as I already said it's not exactly rare outside the top leagues, unfortunately. I read your last article and I think things will get better with the centralization of TV rights, but by now it's good that at least games are more entartaining, and a lot of teams score goals against "bad defenses", even if a team like Arsenal had a lot of trouble scoring goals against one of those defences

Its the first time the discussion goes into "enjoyable". The discussion started and had always gone into competitiveness and sustainability. I'll quote your initial post:

I'd say even more, what about a championship with only 4 teams? That would be way cooler!
Being serious, saying this in a year where the goal average has been way higher than previous years and where there are mid teams like Arouca and Famalicão - I mean, if the top-4 is demolishing everyone, it's because the league is weak, but if Porto and Braga are losing points against a lot of smaller teams it's because the league is weak too?

You refer weak, not enjoyable!

I say our market is very limited, the revenues are very small, not enough for all teams. When you don't have enough revenues you cut the expenses. You do it everywhere. You implying that if we adopt the model of Austria or Scotland we will fall to their level is as false as saying that if we increas to 20 clubs we will move to the level of Premier League or Bundesliga. Its just BS and you know it.
With a better system you will improve, its that the point.

Aren't Austria and Scotland good examples? Just think how those leagues would look and work with 18 teams, with even lower revenues per each team. Its not a question of beating league A or B, its getting better than we are: Getting SUSTAINABLE.
Do leagues similar like Austria and Scotland have so many bankrupcy and failled clubs has Portugal has? I'm not talking about Romania or Bulgaria where politics and corruption have a major rola. I'm talking about leagues from western and central europe like the mentioned and Czechia or Switzerland. They look much more sustainable and steady.

The wages and financial problems have increased and will increase. International football (world) is more and more competitive, expensive, and the laws more liberal, so yes its a tougher world and the clubs that aren't well structured enough will go down, and those in the edge when credit ends will go down. Financial problems will keep increasing unless fundamental changes aren't made, and even with those changes financial problems will still happen, at a much lower rate we expect, its the purpose of any changes.
To deal with financial issues SAD's were created (with barely no results) in late 1990's early 2000's, and since early 2000's the question of teams reduction is being discussed with studies being made.

[rpo.castro]

MAIN ISSUE: Our league doesn't have enough money to sustain a quality league (same problem as many other smaller leagues)
REDUCTION OF TEAMS: I don't believe that a reduction will solve the issue. We will lose players and spots for younger players to develop at portuguese top level. This means in the future we will start seeing youth academies not being as profitable as they are now. I remember when we had 16 teams, and only Sporting (and because it didn't had the money) was using it's youth players.
Reducing teams will only reduce the possibility of having a regular pyramid competition. It will become more exclusive for the same 20 something teams and that's it.
FINANCE: TV rights (most probably) won't solve all issues. The league is weak and won't get much good publicity outside of Portugal (with exception of the matches between the best 4 or 5 teams, most matches are very poor). So I don't see how having less teams would help, with the exception that the cake would have larger slices for each of the teams, but it would never be enough to make stronger teams (See Scotland, Austria, etc, championships with less than 14 teams are not in a good position in UEFA ranking, and don't have more than 1 or 2 good enough teams).
The future will probably pass by TV rights + foreigner shareholders/investors (something like SC Braga is starting to do with QSI).
Big teams (SL Benfica, FC Porto and Sporting CP) need to learn that it's not their league, so the TV rights should be divided in a much fairer way than they are today with individual rights. The portuguese league should follow a model like Premier League to redistribute the TV rights money, even if that means SLB, FCP and SCP receive less than they receive today. RIght now probably they receive more than 20 times more than other teams, and at top I would say ratio between 1st and 16th in the league shouldn't be higher than 1 to 5.

And for now that's my 2 cents. I probably have some other ideas I didn't touched, but when I have patience to write another lengthily text I will do it again

I agree with the main points.
The new tv deal won't increase. We can only get money from internal market. Premier League new tv deal, taking account the inflation, the new value is lower than the previous, so there won't be more money overall.

With less teams each slice is bigger, and you can either go for a playoff or going for a third round. You will get 2 effects: get rid of lowest quality teams and have more matches between top teams, so your level will increase, your attendance will increase, so you can get more money from sponsors and ticketing. On long term you might sell tv rights in external market but this value will always be a small amount of internal market.

Besides a bigger share, there should be more equality among tv rights distribution. We are by far the country with more unbalance. There should be a base share, and than a share based on performance and a share based on club dimension/revenue generated. This mean that top 3 or 5 will have their tv deals decrease to increase the others. More clubs to share, harder to get a consensus, and less effective the dilution.

Another discussion must be made for the II Liga teams (financially). Should we adopt a model like Championship? Should we dilute the tv deal for all teams?

As for investors, a lot of clubs have foreign investors right now. A lot have had in the past, most of them shady just for money laundry and of course clubs went down.

Braga: Qatar Sports Investments 21,7%. Club Association has 37%, 24 % diluted by small investors and 17% by a shady unknown investor that we belive being the current chairman.

Vitória SC: 46% V Sports (Aston Villa owners)

Casa Pia: MSD Capital (same owner as Spezia).

Famalicão: 85% Idan Offer (also owns 33% of Atlético Madrid)

Boavista: Gerard Lopez (does he still owns Bordeaux? and Mouscron, from Belgium, had own previously Lille and Lotus F1 team).

Vizela: Edmund Chu, canadian-chinese guy that found Kosmos with Pique

Estoril: David Blitzer: Managing partner of Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils (by HBSE), General partner of Crystal Palace and Owner of Real Salt Lake, AD Alcorcón, S.K. Beveren, ADO Den Haag and Brøndby IF.

Portimonense: Theodoro Fonseca, brazillian guy that sells players.

Estrela da Amadora, o MYFC, owned by Patrice Evra

Chaves is own by a local businessman since I can remember.

Arouca is also own by a local businessman (Pinho) When he stops putting money, the clubs ends.

Rio Ave, Evangelos Marinakis

Gil Vicente, Porto, Benfica, Sporting - Club owned.

Farense - I don't know if there are investors or its club owned only

In II Liga and even III Liga scenario is the same. Quite often the so called investor disappeares leaving the club in bankrupcy.

There is no lack of investors. Some of them are really investing money in infrastructures like in Famalicão but most not. I Liga like most leagues aren't profitable. Only Premier League and Bundesliga are profitable. In la Liga and Serie A some clubs are profitable some not. In other leagues not having financial losses are the prime goal.

[rpo.castro]

Portuguese league standings after Sporting played the delayed match against Famalicão:

1. Sporting 77pts/29matches
2. Benfica 60/29
3. Porto 59/29
4. Braga 59/29
5. Guimarães 57/29

Cup Final

26 may Sporting-Porto, Porto beat Guimarães in 2nd leg by 3-1 (4-1 agg)

[rpo.castro]

This is I Liga: https://twitter.com/vsports_pt/status/1 ... gr%5Etweet

Chaves-Estoril today

Pitch invasion by home supporters to attack away GK. Players try to protect GK and more people come into the ground.

In a normal country match should be terminated and defeat for home team. Our referees gave 2 red cards for the attacked players: one that hit one hooligan with th knee, and the GK that only tried to keep the attackers away from them.
Home team playing against a team with 9 players and no GK, managed to score.

Portuguese football. Exciting!

[rpo.castro]

FC Porto presidengial elections: former coach André Villas Boas was elected new president putting end of Pinto da Costa era (42 consecutive years as president).
26.741 people took part in the elections. Villas Boas won in all 44 voting sections. Looks a massive win.

Lack of transparency, huge debts, shady business and violence and intimidation by the ultras were the reasons behind this change.

[TommyChat]

FC Porto presidengial elections: former coach André Villas Boas was elected new president putting end of Pinto da Costa era (42 consecutive years as president).
26.741 people took part in the elections. Villas Boas won in all 44 voting sections. Looks a massive win.

Lack of transparency, huge debts, shady business and violence and intimidation by the ultras were the reasons behind this change.

It's also funny that the outgoing president renewed the contract of Conceicao until 2028 just 2 days before elections.

[Greyn]

It is said that his extended contract may be void and Porto will not be obligated to pay him a penny for that.

[rpo.castro]

FC Porto presidengial elections: former coach André Villas Boas was elected new president putting end of Pinto da Costa era (42 consecutive years as president).
26.741 people took part in the elections. Villas Boas won in all 44 voting sections. Looks a massive win.

Lack of transparency, huge debts, shady business and violence and intimidation by the ultras were the reasons behind this change.

It's also funny that the outgoing president renewed the contract of Conceicao until 2028 just 2 days before elections.

If it was just that.

Sporting has an Youth academy for more than 2 decades. Benfica must have built their 10 years ago, given or taken. Porto never built. They decide to buy the places (although they didn't have the licences) less than 1 month before elections. And they sent machines to work 1 day, so they could say they were building. It. The other candidate, now president had a different location and project, close to where senior team is located. If previous president project goes on, the facilities will be span over 3 different cities.

In the week before elections previous president sold the naming and comercial rights of the stadium for the next 25 years.

Two days before elections they renewed the contract of Francisco Conceição (son of the coach) in very hard conditions for the club (the player holds 20% of future transfer, plus big bonus for renewing). Remembering this player went for 5M to Ajax and was bought from Ajax by 10M after 1 year. In the same day they extended the contract of the coach Sérgio Conceição as a thank you since it was the results above the squad value that kept the president in its place until now.

Not hard to understand that all those actions backfired, although I think the main point was the criminal acts by the ultras that in last general associates assembly they beat every person who tried to speak against the former president. Those acts would lead to detentions of the head of the ultras, with former president denying there was violence despite the images transmitted by people there, and his blind support to the ultras, his praetorian guard. That was the turning point for most people that made them say "no more".

The record of people voting in Porto elections was 10k. Yesterday 27k, 21k of them chose to change against 5k. Its 80% against 20%. Its a massive defeat and a clear scream for change.

[angel_87]

Porto are currently (55') winning 2-0 over Sporting... title race reopened?

[rpo.castro]

Porto are currently (55') winning 2-0 over Sporting... title race reopened?

They just need 2 wins out of 3 matches against easy teams, 2 matches home where they only have wins.
Sporting doesn't win at porto for ages. Kind of expected this result.

[rpo.castro]

Porto are currently (55') winning 2-0 over Sporting... title race reopened?

They just need 2 wins out of 3 matches against easy teams, 2 matches home where they only have wins.
Sporting doesn't win at porto for ages. Kind of expected this result.

And Porto losses a secure win in just 1 minute. Gyökeres.