UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE FINAL FC PORTO v BRAGA:Tonight's final may fall short on the financial end, but there are bigger fish to fry in the longer term, writes EMMET MALONE
IF THEY didn’t already have a fair bit on their plate just now, the boys at the IMF might just be a little alarmed by the sudden transfer of people and cash between Portugal and Ireland these past few days. It might well emerge over the coming weeks, of course, that all of the latter simply has to be diverted to the organisation’s coffers under some obscure clause in either their bailout deal or ours.
In reality, though, the financial crisis has taken an inevitable toll on the sense of occasion surrounding tonight’s game. Some 10,000 tickets have made their way back to Dublin in recent days with the two clubs explaining that many of their supporters simply cannot afford to splash out on day trips to Dublin at a time when money is in such short supply at home. With 2,000 of those only having gone back on sale here yesterday, the prospect of there being empty seats inside the stadium this evening would now appear to be very real if the tickets are not sold or given away over the course of today.
The upshot is that, having already been lowered when the bigger British sides, any one of which might have been expected to flood the city with fans, were eliminated, the organisers’ projections on the take from this first ever European final to be staged in Ireland will have to be revised downwards again. Now, it seems, they will do well to match the €20 million or so generated in Manchester and Glasgow on similar occasions in recent years.
However, Karl Mitchell of Dublin City Council is still hopeful that the figure might end up being in that sort of ballpark but insists that the really important game is a rather longer one. Just as events like the Ryder Cup, Heineken Cup finals and Special Olympics were regarded as successes and so enhanced the reputation of the country abroad making it, in turn, easier to attract the next event, a good occasion tonight will be remembered when the council and its various partners go out and do battle for their next major sporting target.
“It definitely puts us in a place where we can say we’ve got a record that we can point to,” he says.
The logistics of it all are certainly impressive. Even allowing for the returned tickets, around half of this evening’s attendance will be from abroad and getting into and back out of the country as well as around a city that seems somewhat preoccupied with a solitary visitor from somewhere rather closer to home, all takes a bit of doing.
Around 200 volunteers have been enlisted to help key “partners” like the DAA, the Gardai and Dublin Bus look after the estimated 25,000 visitors.
Perhaps more remarkable, though, is the operation inside a slightly modified, and significantly rebranded, stadium where the organisers have to balance the expectations of spectators with the requirements of the broadcasters who pay most of the bills and whose work justifies the expense to the sponsors who pay most of the rest.
Host broadcaster TV3 will provide the backbone of the operation and the station has some pride in meeting what is, given its size, a fairly daunting challenge. There will be around 70 cameras inside the ground this evening providing pictures to 52 on-site broadcasters who will beam pictures out of Ireland via 19 different satellites. More than 50 million viewers are expected to tune in.
If, as expected, it all goes well, then it will become part of the city’s CV and so it goes on as the various parties gain more experience while sizing up what else they might be able to take on. Scotland identifies events five years in advance and starts working to prepare the ground, says Mitchell, and the hope here is to start doing something similar.
“We’ve got most of the things we need to look at a level of event that we probably couldn’t have looked at before,” he says, citing the new stadium, airport terminal and improved transport infrastructure. “If it’s going to go to the likes of Glasgow or Cardiff or Copenhagen then why not Dublin, that’s the question you’ve got to ask yourself.”
The question the fans who can’t afford to travel have more likely asked themselves, as it happens, is probably: “Why Dublin?” They might well feel that “because we built it” really isn’t a good enough reason to expect them to come.
And really, if there isn’t even enough interest here to take up the returned tickets, then they might just have a point.
Futebol Clube do Porto
Founded:1893
Honours:25 league titles, 15 Portuguese cups, 17 Portuguese SuperCups, 2 Champions League titles, 1 Uefa Cup, 1 Super Cup, 2 Inter Continental Cups.
Path to final:Beat Genk home and away to qualify for the competition's group stage where they finished three points ahead of Besiktas with rapid Vienna and CSKA Sofia trailing. They then eliminated Seville, CSKA Moscow, Spartak Moscow and Villarreal in the knockout stages.
Irish connection: Mickey Walsh spent six years at Porto. “I left Porto in 1986 and within a year they were champions of Europe – I don’t know if that had anything to do with me leaving.”
THEIR THREE-way rivalry with Benfica and Sporting Clube de Portugal (the Lisbon giants after whom Braga are actually named) may have been the driving force behind Portuguese club football for the nigh on 80 years since the modern league format took a firm hold in the country but over the past decade or Porto have been the kingpins.
Porto may still trail Benfica in terms of titles won (they have 25 compared to their rivals’ 32 at this stage) but with seven in the last nine years they are catching up fast. From its outstanding stadium overlooking the country’s second city, Porto have become not just the leading side at home but also a significant force abroad.
They reached their first continental final – a Cup Winners’ Cup decider which they lost to Juventus in 1984 but three years later they were back, on the biggest stage of all, beating Bayern Munich 2-1 in Vienna to lift the European Cup. The team then was managed by Artur Jorge, captained by Joao Pinto and included the likes of Brazilian centre back Celso and Portuguese internationals Antonio Andre and Antonio Sousa.
Under Jose Mourinho, they won both the Uefa Cup and Champions League and having dominated the Primeira Liga under the now Real Madrid boss and his successor Jesualdo Ferreira through most of the seasons since, they are on the verge of making another major mark on the European stage under Andre Villas-Boas.
The 33-year-old’s first season in charge has been a spectacular success. The club has set a succession of new records as they became the first Portuguese side in 40 years (the second of all time) to go through a whole league campaign unbeaten. They took 84 points from a possible 90 which was, considering the reduced number of games, even better than Mourinho’s best feat.
In Europe they have been impressive too, comfortably topping their group in the round robin stage and then overcoming opponents from Spain and Russia to reach the final, with Spartak Moscow and Villarreal eliminated 6-2 and 7-4 on aggregate respectively.
During the latter victory, in particular, Villas-Boas showed just how much confidence he possesses when, at half-time in the first leg with Porto trailing, he made changes to both the team and their tactics. The Portuguese ran riot after the break, scoring five times, to effectively render the return match a formality.
Several of the club’s players, attacking left back Alvaro Pereira, influential midfielder Joao Moutinho and, perhaps most notably, front men Falcao and Hulk have greatly enhanced their reputations over the course of the year and have already been widely linked with moves to some of Europe’s biggest clubs.
So too has the manager whose employers have been busily issuing “hands off” warnings to all-comers. His inexperience may give one or two potential suitors cause for pause but victory tonight could well prompt one of the continent’s very biggest sides to take their chances.
Sporting Clube de Braga
Founded:1921
Honours:1 Portuguese Cup, 1 Inter-Toto Cup.
Path to final:They started out by beating both Celtic and Seville to make the Champions League group stages. Finished third behind Shaktar Donetsk and Arsenal but well ahead of Partisan Belgrade and switched competitions. They then beat Lech Poznan, Liverpool, Dynamo Kiev and Benfica in the knockout stages.
Irish connection:Dominic Foley had one full season at Braga in 2003/04. The Corkman, who joined after a string of loan spells away from Watford, scored once in 12 appearances for the club.
IF THEIR opponents this evening are currently the leading members of Portugal’s “Big Three” then Braga are enjoying life these days as the dominant half of the “next two” with the club having comfortably the better of things against near neighbours and old rivals Vitoria de Guimaraes in recent years.
Formed 90 years ago, the club took just over a quarter of a century to make it to the country’s top flight before floating between the top two divisions for much the same time again but since the mid-1970s they have firmly established themselves amongst the elite.
Being chosen as a host city for the European Championships in 2004 seems to have given them the leg up they needed to start nipping at the heels of the country’s big boys. Armed with a spectacular new 30,000 capacity stadium – it is hewn out of a rocky mountainside just outside the city — and the commercial opportunities it presented, the club made significant strides and finished fourth in the league in each of the three seasons between 2005 and 2007 while also starting to compete regularly in Europe.
Last year, they managed their best ever finish in the championship, second behind Benfica, an achievement that earned them a coveted place in the Champions League for the first time.
Their route to Dublin has been something of a roller coaster. Renowned for the strength of their defending and speedy counter-attacking under coach Domingos Paciencia they beat both Celtic and Seville to make the group stages of the competition but kicked off their campaign by conceding nine against Arsenal and Shaktar Donetsk between them in their opening two games. To their credit, they then steadied the ship, beat Partisan Belgrade home and away before making sure of third place and a spot in the Europa League by defeating Arsene Wenger’s side 2-0 at home in November.
The victory was especially sweet for the club and its supporters. The team’s colours were changed to those of the London outfit during the 1940s after then coach, Hungary’s Josef Szabo, visited England and came back intent on emulating the methods of what he reckoned was its best side. Since then the fans have been known locally as the “Arsenalistas”.
In the next three rounds, during which Lech Poznan, Liverpool and Dnamo Kiev were eliminated, they conceded just once and they clinched their place in tonight’s final by beating Benfica on away goals.
The dramatic progress made under the former Portugal international in recent seasons has ensured that some of his best players have caught the eye of wealthier clubs. Goalkeeper Eduardo left for Genoa in Italy last year, left-back Evaldo moved to Sporting Lisbon.
Further raids seem sure to follow this year’s European exploits regardless of how this evening’s game pans out and perhaps feeling that it will be impossible in the circumstances to top his achievements to date, the manager announced last week that he too will move on over the summer.
