A striking marker in the magnificent museum that Porto maintains in the basement of its stadium updates the titles obtained by the entity since Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa became president of the club. At the beginning of this year it was at 2,549. There is a catch: the club supports nine multi-sports sections and more than half of those awards are individual triumphs obtained under the blue and white flag or with the blue and white shield. But everything is excessive with the man known as the Pope of Portuguese football, who became president in April 1982. And 42 seasons later the count stops. Pinto da Costa, who on his way to 87 years of age aspired to finish a sixteenth term as a nonagenarian, was defeated this Saturday in fratricidal elections that brought André Villas-Boas to the presidency, the last coach with whom the footballing Porto won their last European title, thirteen years ago. 79.96% of voters trust him to clean up a club whose liabilities are estimated at around 500 million euros and a financial debt that exceeds 310 million.
Villas-Boas’ last experience on the bench was in Marseille three years ago. There he was the great bet of Andoni Zubizarreta, then sports director of the French club. Now it is the Portuguese who calls on the Basque to build a football project in which Pinto da Costa sets the bar high. In 1982, Porto had barely won the Portuguese championship seven times, dominated with an iron arm by the Lisbon teams, winners in all the others that had been played since 1934. Today, Porto keeps 30 leagues in its museum. He won 23 with Pinto da Costa, who adds 15 Cups, 22 Portuguese Super Cups to his record and has turned the club into a continental classic with 2 Champions Leagues, 2 Europa Leagues, 1 Super Cup and 2 Intercontinental Cups. “If you want a strong FC Porto in Portugal and in Europe, vote for list B, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa“, was the motto with which he ran for election in 1982. There is no doubt that he has delivered. The great Portuguese club of the last four decades has been Porto and its president the leader who tirelessly championed the battle against “the centralism of Lisbon.”
But the triumph has another side, that of an economic management that has the entity in a delicate position despite successive capital increases or signing agreements such as the one it sealed this month with the Spanish investment fund Ithaka Infra for the which gives up 30% of the exploitation rights of the Dragão stadium for the next 25 years. Shortly before, Pinto da Costa had closed an agreement to finance 250 million euros of long-term debt and this same week he closed the four-year renewal of coach Sergio Conceição. “Contracts can always be terminated,” clarifies the former president.
The financial difficulties are surprising in a club that has championed its ability to detect talent and generate high capital gains in the transfer market. Pinto da Costa had worked for six years at the club as football director before becoming president. Since twenty years ago it surprised Europe by winning its last Champions League in Porto, more than 1.4 billion euros have been generated in transfers. Otavio left this summer for 60 million euros, the previous one between Vitinha and Fábio Vieira left 76 million, before Luis Díaz left for 50 and in the middle of the pandemic between Fábio Silva and Alex Telles they added 55 million more. Madrid signed Eder Militão for 50 in the summer of 2020 and that same summer Atlético paid 20 for Felipe. The list of illustrious transfers without significant prior investments is devastating: Diogo Dalot, André Silva, Rubén Neves, Danilo Pereira Jackson Martínez, Danilo, Alex Sandro, Casemiro, Mangala, James, Moutinho, Hulk and Falcao also left O Dragão after they In 2012 Pinto da Costa assumed that the club was losing more than 30 million euros per year. All despite the annual income generated by its stability in European competitions.
“We owe money to everyone,” cries Villas-Boas, who comes to the presidency amidst the hostility of the noisy ultra sector, whose leader Fernando Madureira MacaqueHe has been in preventive detention for three months. Last November, the Superdragões dynamited a members’ meeting amid chants threatening Villas-Boas. “FC Porto is ours,” they shouted. A judge accused Madureira of being the instigator of the riot and also requested the arrest of eleven more people, some of them club employees. “They wanted to create a climate of intimidation and fear,” concludes the Prosecutor’s Office.
The enormous silent majority spoke out loudly at the polls. “Pinto da Costa forever, but we want a change,” explained one of the fans interviewed by the Portuguese channel CNN before the polls. Villas-Boas won in all 44 polling stations and left Pinto da Costa with a mere 19.44% support. Of English ancestors and great-grandson of the first Viscount of Guilhomil, that boy who at the age of 16 wrote a letter to Bobby Robson to advise him on the management of the team of his heart, 30 years later, takes a turn in his career as a coach. Exultantly, dressed in a historic club shirt, he thanked Pinto da Costa, assured him that O Dragão will always be his home, but then he addressed the fans and told them: “Thanks to you, FC Porto is free again”.
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