A luta continua in the Portuguese Liga this week, with Estrela de Amadora’s unpaid players setting in motion the unfortunate process of a players’ strike that will no doubt gain world-wide publicity and shame the game of football here in Portugal. We concentrate on the situation in the first part of the the podcast, trying to find some solutions to the whole sorry mess that is becoming all too sadly commonplace in the Portuguese game. We’ll also report on Estrela’s 0-1 defeat away to Benfica, who struggled to a win against an Amadora 11 who had spent most of the week in negotiations with their union leader, Joaquim Evangelista, rather than actually training for the game. What’s more, our word of the week will ensure that you’re never short of a four letter word or two whenever you’re visiting Portugal.
In Part 2 we look at the other games that took place at the weekend, most notably Leixões’ excellent 1-0 win over Sporting at Alvalade. Porto get back to their winning ways against a lacklustre Guimarães and Paços find their first win of the season against Naval with the Liga’s top scorer William netting the winner.
Finally, in part 3, we report on Operation Fair Play, which saw 30 members of Benfica’s claque The No Name Boys arrested in raids across the country on suspicion of drug trafficking.
There’ll be no podcast next week because of family commitments but we’ll be back in two weeks’ time to bring you the latest about Portuguese football in English!
Thanks for listening.
Steve & Phil
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