<!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>
Welcome back to the third footballportugal podcast, probably the only place on the internet where you can hear two guys speak in English for over half an hour about Portuguese football (or Portuguese soccer, as our American listeners may prefer it).
In Part 1 we’ll be reviewing this weekend’s Taça de Portugal results. There were few surprises, Benfica struggled, Porto groaned and their fans managed to aim a few boos at their disgruntled footballing genius, Ricardo Quaresma. What’s more, Sporting scored four goals. There’ll be an in depth report on the Estrela Amadora Vs Sporting Braga game, along with some frank opinions on whether anyone really cares about the Taça de Portugal.
Part 2 will focus on the poor attendances at games in Portuguese football. Today’s edition of the daily Portuguese sports newspaper “a Bola” dedicated its first 4 pages to try and find a reason why attendances are so poor in Portugal. We’ll be summarising what they had to say and also offering our own tuppence on this matter.
Finally, in part 3, we’ll answer the question of the week (keep ‘em coming, e-mail: info@footballportugal.com) and previewing the weekend’s upcoming fixtures, most notably the clássico between Sporting and FC Porto next Sunday at 8 o’clock. We’ll also have a quick debate on bum advertising, can it ever be a good thing for the game?
We hope you enjoy this week’s podcast and please feel free to give us any feedback, either here on the site or by e-mail.
Thank you for listening.
****************************
This podcast has now been removed
****************************
Could you do something like a beginner’s guide to Portuguese football, explaining the history, clubs, rivalries, fans, who are the important personalties, the perrenial problems and controversies, the current big issues? All in about, oh, ten minutes?
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS!
My main source for Portuguese football news no longer exists so I’ve been dying to keep up with everything and then I find this (from the link you posted in the Facebook group)! Keep it up!!!
Fantastic, you guys are really filling a void here — thank you!
(Are you on iTunes? That’d make remembering to check back and listening even easier.)
Hi, thanks so much for your comments, we really appreciate them. We don’t have an iTunes account as yet but we’re trying to sort that out.
With regards to k’s query, I think we’ll definitely do something on rivalries in the podcast after next (next week we’re concentrating on transfers). I think the rest of your questions should be solved by keeping in touch with the podcast, for sure the biggest personalities are Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa and Luis Filipe Vieira (Presidents of Porto and Benfica respectively) and the perennial problem is the “apito dourado” (Golden Whistle) where it is alleged that the presidents of some clubs influence the result of games by offering the referees of those games favours.
Wasn’t it da Costa who was accused of buying hookers for referees over the summer? I was in Lisbon for a few months and got completely sucked in to all the drama, despite understanding at best about 2.5%.
With Euro2008 coming up in a few months I’ll be excited to hear about Scolari’s (and your) choices for the Selecção. In particular I am curious to hear your thoughts on players like Yannick Djalo, João Moutinho, Pele, Pepe, Carlos Martins, and Makukula. Do you think they’ll start being included more frequently? My friend and I talk about this a lot so it’d be refreshing to hear other opinions…! Love your podcasts, keep up the nice work!!!
Andrew, I don’t rate Djalo at all, apart from one impressive display in a pre-season friendly, he’s never really fulfilled the potential he had at junior level. Personally, I believe Moutinho would be a better option than Deco but I doubt many others would agree with me. Pelé seems to be proving himself at Inter and it wouldn’t surprise me if he featured in Scolari’s squad. Pepe will definitely feature. I’m a fan of Carlos Martins but he plays in a position where there is just so much quality available that I doubt he’ll feature. On the other hand, Makukula plays in a position that Portgual has huge problems occupying and I suspect he will feature and he may make quite a name for himself at the tournament.
Thanks a lot, Stephen. That’s a shame because I had high hopes for Djalo. The attacking aspect of the National Team has been a source of worry for me with Postiga’s lack of quality and falling out at Porto lately and I’m not sure that Nuno Gomes is a great option either. That’s still a long way away though, so for now I’ll just have to hope Sporting turn their season around really soon…preferably today.
I love your site. I found your blog via Google while searching for portuguese soccer players and your post regarding The Third footballportugal Podcast looks very interesting to me. It really looks very nice. The articles provided are long enough to provide great content but not so long as to be totally engrossing, if you know what I mean.