FC Porto ends European run with nearly €24m after Europa League exit | OneFootball

A week after drawing 1-1 at home to Nottingham Forest, managed by former Porto coach Vítor Pereira, and to Betis, respectively, the ‘Dragons’ were beaten away to the English side (1-0), while the ‘Arsenalists’ came from behind to win away to the Spaniards (4-2).

FC Porto, winners of Europe’s second-tier club competition in 2002/03 and 2010/11, missed out on the €4.2 million prize tied to reaching the semi-finals, unlike Sporting de Braga, who return to the group of semi-finalists for the first time since 2010/11, after losing to the ‘Dragons’ in an all-Portuguese final (1-0) played in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

Both clubs surpassed the amounts earned last season, when, in the first edition featuring a 36-team league phase instead of the 32-team group stage, FC Porto received €16.488 million after being knocked out by Italy’s Roma in the round of 16, while Sporting de Braga, eliminated in the main stage, earned no more than €13.437 million.

As in 2024/25, the ‘Blue and Whites’ entered this season directly into the competition’s league phase and immediately secured €4.31 million, while the Minho side added €350,000 to that base amount from the preliminary rounds, in which they eliminated Bulgaria’s Levski Sofia, Romania’s Cluj and Gibraltar’s Lincoln Red Imps.

As for the pillar value, linked to the market size of each club’s country and the clubs’ coefficients in UEFA’s five-year and 10-year rankings for the European and non-European components, FC Porto took in €9.31 million, compared with Sporting de Braga’s €6.797 million.

The ‘Dragons’ received €6.51 million from the European component, in which they ranked seventh — the minimum amount of €217,000 was multiplied by 30 shares — and €2.80 million from the non-European component, having finished second — €80,000 times 35.

In addition to the initial prize and the pillar value, both teams also profited from their performance in the league phase, in which FC Porto and Sporting de Braga finished fifth and sixth respectively, both qualifying directly for the round of 16 with 17 points from five wins, two draws and one defeat.

Each win was worth €450,000, for a total of €2.25 million, and each draw brought in €150,000, for a total of €300,000, while their final placing, together with the redistributed draw surplus, earned Porto a bonus of €2.592 million — 32 shares multiplied by €81,000 — and Braga €2.511 million — 31 shares of €81,000.

As there were 25 draws in that phase, creating a surplus of €3.75 million, each position came to be worth an extra €81,000 compared with the place immediately below, instead of the €75,000 initially set by UEFA.

FC Porto and Sporting de Braga also collected €600,000 for finishing in the top eight and €1.75 million for automatic qualification to the round of 16, becoming the first Portuguese clubs to achieve this since the latest format change in the Europa League’s main stage, which allowed them to avoid the play-off.

While the ‘Blue and Whites’ beat Germany’s Stuttgart twice (2-1 away and 2-0 at home), the ‘Arsenalists’ first lost to Ferencváros (2-0), but turned the tie around at home against the Hungarians (4-0), securing the €2.5 million bonus tied to a place in the quarter-finals.

FC Porto and Sporting de Braga had different paths in the quarter-finals, with the ‘Dragons’’ total prize money of €23.612 million falling below the amounts earned by the four semi-finalists, who, besides the ‘Arsenalists’ with €25.568 million, include England’s Aston Villa (€28.003 million) and Nottingham Forest (€24.086 million), and Germany’s Freiburg (€25.627 million).

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.