Blast from the past: Portimonense and Farense play out brilliant Christmas time Algarve derby | OneFootball

The Carnation Revolution was felt in every single aspect of Portuguese society. Not at the same time, not at the same pace, but quietly, Portugal started to feel like a different, more modern country.

Part of that change came hand in hand with a slow, incomplete, but essential decentralisation process that football represented perhaps better than any other popular activity. For decades, the main bulk of the football league clubs had come from the greater Lisbon area, including the Setúbal district, the economic pillar of the fascist regime. A scarce nationwide presence of other sides explained why the country was not comfortable with itself once it lost sight of the walls of the capital.

April 1974 changed all that. The economy in other regions boomed, released from the shackles of the corporativist economic model preferred by António Salazar and his successor Marcelo Caetano, and in turn helped regional football clubs make a name for themselves. It was a slow-paced change that spread across the land over the following decade. By the mid-1980s, the regions of Madeira, Trás-os-Montes, Minho and the inland districts of the Beiras had found their voice in the football league. One of the greatest symbols of this new era was the fact the Algarve derby was finally played among the big fish in Portuguese football’s top division.

A big crowd attended the Algarve derby played a couple of days before Christmas Day, 1984

Algarve’s impoverished past

Portimonense and Farense have become the two big names of a region that always felt at odds with the rest of Portuguese society. For centuries, the Algarve was so isolated that it was easier for locals to reach Seville, far across the Spanish Andalusian border, than Lisbon. Dependent on fishing, the relationship with those who lived there – and they were not many – was closer to the northern Moroccan villages or the Spanish pueblos on the other side of the border. It was a social dynamic that changed the way they talked, the way they behaved and the way they managed to stay alive, fighting for crumbs.

Football clubs suffered as much as anyone else. Despite the early popularity of the game – in Spain, it had been established just across the border in Huelva, so from an early period football was played in the Algarve as well – no football club was ever able to thrive. Olhanense, the region’s third big club, even managed to claim the Campeonato de Portugal in the late 1920s, making them winners of a cup format competition that is viewed as the predecessor of the Primeira Liga or the Portuguese Cup, depending on who you are talking to. It was Algarve’s football finest hour, but not only was it forgotten by everyone else in the land, but also in the region itself, and soon enough Olhanense fell into almost oblivion.

Same colours, intense rivalry

Only Sporting Clube Farense, a club founded by a group of teenagers who so admired Sporting CP that they decided to go with their name and colours, only to mistake the green and white half of the shirt for black and white, as the published photos were not yet in colour in the 1920s. Portimonense Sport Club, who also decided to go with the black and white as their primary colours, presented some sense of the football potential of the region.

Their rivalry was deeply felt by the 1930s, and they were regular contestants of the Portuguese second and third divisions from the 1940s onwards. Backed by the canned fish industry developed in the area, Portimonense were almost promoted in 1949 to the first tier but the political influence of a cabinet minister of Salazar’s, Fernando Andrade Pires de Lima, who had a fancy for Académica, forced a tie at a neutral ground after the team from the Algarve came on top in the promotion play-off. The Coimbra club won out. It was the closest Portimonense ever came to playing in the first division during the fascist years.

A motorway and tourism transform Algarve

Farense only got there in 1971, despite having tried for several seasons, also fuelled by the local economy focused on the canning industry. It was a short-lived experience, but it proved that the Algarve was starting to be heard, and it wasn’t only in footballing terms. The motorway connecting Lisbon to Portugal’s southern coast to provide access to the summer pleasures of the region was a reality by then, and soon enough, a tourism boom completely changed the lives of the Algarvians. It became the primary holiday destination for Lisbon’s upper classes, and after the April Revolution, it was also adopted by the emergent middle classes who were ready to make an almost fifteen-hour drive from north to south to enjoy its paradisiacal beaches.

By the 1980s, visitors from abroad, particularly from the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, who had already travelled the length and breadth of the Spanish coastline, also found in the Algarve the perfect holiday destination. A poor region still, but one that had now found a new fountain of riches and eventually that money followed the sporting path. By the early 1980s, for the first time, the Algarve had two sides competing in the first division. It was during the 1983/84 campaign, and both duels ended in a draw. Neither team was relegated, so the Algarve readied itself for another season in the top flight and another derby that sparked the attention of the region’s football community. What few expected is that the game would mean so much come the end of the season.

Exceeding expectations

On 23 December 1984, two days before Christmas, there was still some sun peeking out of the clouds that swept across Portimão, as buses from Faro started to arrive in town, bringing the Farense supporters for a heated duel. The two regional giants were preparing to face off once again, but few had expected, at the beginning of the campaign, that things would be going so well for both, particularly for Portimonense.

Halfway through the season, to the surprise of many, Portimonense were flying high in the standings and Farense were also in the top half of the table

While Farense sat comfortably in mid-table, having accumulated 13 points in 13 matches played – five above the drop-zone where Rio Ave sat – Portimonense had found themselves as close to a title run as they ever had been. The side was fourth in the league table, with 18 points, just three fewer than reigning champions Benfica and five below Artur Jorge’s FC Porto, who sat at the top of the table. Moreover, the five-point gap to Braga, in sixth, meant Portimonense were at least well placed for a UEFA Cup slot in the following season, something few had ever expected to happen for a club from the Algarve.

Manuel José bursts onto the scene

Everything had to do with the coaching genius of Manuel José, one of Portugal’s most influential football managers and the greatest icon of football in the Algarve. Born in Vila Real de Santo António, right alongside the River Guadiana border with Spain, Manuel José enjoyed a playing career that took him to Benfica as a youth graduate and then across the full geography of Portuguese football in the seventies, playing for the likes of Farense, União de Tomar, Beira-Mar and Sporting Espinho. It was there, by the Atlantic, that his career as player-manager kick-started in 1978, and after a brief spell in Guimarães, where he succeeded José Maria Pedroto, José moved back to his favoured Algarve to take charge of Portimonense.

There, he assembled a memorable side that included mostly local players. Despite all the commodities and new highways, most players still preferred to be paid less and remain near Lisbon or Porto instead of travelling south to an almost isolated piece of land. José had in the likes of Alinho, Bernardino Pedroto, Teixeirinha, the former Porto veteran Simões, Abreu, Carvalho, Vítor Oliveira (future manager of many first division sides) the brothers João and Luis Reina and the young Rui Águas, son of the former Benfica legend José Águas, players who were talented enough to punch above their weight.

Belgian and Catalan stars

The star of the side was a Belgian, though, Serge Cadorin, a former Liege man who moved to Portugal in 1983, where he spent the rest of the decade, scoring almost fifty goals in a hundred matches played for Portimonense and Académica. Portimonense had only lost two matches, against Boavista and Benfica, and had held Sporting to a draw at home.

They were heavy favourites to win, but Farense also had some decent arguments to their name. Their season didn’t look as fantastic as their neighbours, but under Fernando Mendes, a veteran Sporting icon, with Manuel Cajuda serving has deputy, the Faro Lions could claim in their ranks players such as Teixeira, Hernani, Carraça, Amaral, Rui Lopes, Bukovac, and above all the Catalan Paco Fortes, a former Barcelona player who ended up in the Algarve in the later stages of his career and would become the club’s greatest football icon. It was expected to be a tight affair and ended up turning into a football classic of the era.

Portimonense entered the pitch sporting their best eleven in their usual kit, with Cardorin partnering his fellow Belgian Alain Thiriart, playing in front of a midfield four of Reina, Pedroto, Skoda and Carvalho. Mendes was in goal, and Teixeirinha, Simões, Balacó and Dinis completed the defensive line. Fernando Mendes didn’t have Fortes available due to injury, so he called up the veteran goalkeeper Amaral, alongside Miguel Quaresma, Quim, Leonardo, the Bulgarian international Bukovac, accompanied by Hernani, Carraça, Martins, Borges, Gil and Rui Lopes up front. They dressed in all white.

Packed house

The match report in A Bola was full of praise for both sides and the spectacle they put on

The stadium was packed as it always had been during the heated derbies played while both sides were in the second tier, and the home crowd began to celebrate early as Luis Reina, a local fan favourite, opened the score on the 9th minute with a beautiful strike. Portimonense were clearly motivated by the home support and their positive run of results, and they quickly pressed for a second. It came at the 26th minute. A neat combination between Reina and Cadorin played in the Belgian with the whole goal to aim at in front of a hapless Amaral.

While it looked like a one-sided affair, it was far from it. Farense began fighting back, showing pace and grit where they lacked talent, and they began to create chance after chance until Gil, their slim Brazilian forward, put the ball past Mendes to get one back just before the break. Game on!

In the second half, Farense had the better opportunities as they battled to grab a precious away draw. Manuel José’s boys, on the other hand, felt comfortable on the ball and controlling the rhythm of play, while occasionally causing some scares in the visitors’ defensive line. On the hour, both managers decided to make changes. Fernando Mendes switched Bukovac for Rogério to put an extra man in attack, while José answered by bringing on Julio for Thiriat to gain more presence in the middle of the park.

Tidings of Christmas joy

The match was tight, and when João Reina, the centre-back and Luis’ brother came on, it seemed that Portimonense were preparing to hold on for a final assault, but it was he who headed in a third and decisive goal from a set piece with ten minutes to play. By then, the home crowd had already started to believe the win was theirs, and their Christmas supper would have some extra cheer to it. Chants of Merry Christmas started to erupt from the stands as the players prepared for the final moments.

Farense still had a couple of chances to their name but were unable to make good on them and ended up accepting the defeat as a natural consequence of Portimonense’s brilliant first half of the season.

Manuel José was a happy coach at full time, saying: “We witnessed a great game of football, especially in the first half, which was helped by the springlike afternoon. The teams played with the ball on the ground, with constant switching of flanks and at a pace that the public are not very used too.

Home fortress

A 4-1 away thrashing in Porto at Estádio das Antas brought Manuel José’s players back down to earth, but at the halfway point of the campaign, Portimonense still sat fifth, with the same number of points as Boavista. While many expected them to drop more points in the second half of the season, particularly after a surprising defeat against relegation battling Salgueiros, they remained highly competitive, losing against Sporting and Belenenses away but drawing at Estádio da Luz.

Come the final round, they were still fighting for fourth position in the league table, but an already championship-winning Porto side came to Portimão and won, guaranteeing Boavista would finish the season a step above the side from the Algarve. It was Portimonense’s only home defeat of the entire season, but as they celebrated, further down the coastline, tears were being shed at Faro.

Last day heartbreak for Farense

Farense, who had seemed so comfortable for most of the campaign, got themselves into trouble after a poor series of results. A home draw against Portimonense in the penultimate match of the season meant they had to win on the last day away at Salgueiros’ mythical Vidal Pinheiro ground in what effectively was a final to avoid relegation. The Porto side had 21 points, one fewer than Farense, but a draw may not be enough if Rio Ave managed to win their game as well. It was a tense last day. António Carraça’s goal seemed to have guaranteed Farense another season at the top. Alas, a late comeback powered by the famed Alma Salgueirista resulted in a 3-1 defeat and meant Farense dropped below both Rio Ave and Salgueiros.

The result of that afternoon game just before Christmas in Portimão hurt them in the end more than they could have fathomed. A draw that day would have been enough to guarantee a place in the top flight, but a loss in an Algarve derby played in the first division for the first time also sealed their fate.

Moving in different directions

Portimonense managed to qualify for the following campaign’s UEFA Cup, but with Manuel José moving to coach Sporting, their destiny was soon marred, and they would become a second-tier side by the end of the decade, taking more than twenty years to rise up again.

Paco Fortes is a club legend at Farense, the Catalan spending 15 years as a player and manager at the Algarve club

Farense, on the other hand, ended the decade playing the Portuguese Cup final – the first and only time a club from the Algarve managed such a feat – and then turned into one of the most popular first division sides in the following decade. They would eventually follow in Portimonense’s footsteps by qualifying for European football under Paco Fortes, appointed club manager after his playing career ended.

The democratisation of football

Although two sides from the Algarve would meet at the top of the football pyramid in future years, the 1980s was the decade in which the region was finally fully accepted into the dynamics of Portuguese football.

As with Madeira, who by the end of the 1980s had three sides playing in the first division, the heartfelt story of GD Chaves from Trás-os-Montes, the tenure of Sporting Covilhã in the top flight and the popularity of sides from the centre region of Leiria, Santarém, Coimbra and Aveiro, that was the decade that Portuguese football truly became a national sport, paving the way for a new era away from the centralised constraints and shackles of the past.