Iconic kits: Campomaiorense, the small-town team that made the Portuguese Cup final | OneFootball

Campomaiorense is one of the most heartwarming stories of Portuguese football folklore. A club from a very small town on the eastern border with Spain came out of nowhere to become a top-tier and cup final side before disappearing almost without a trace.

The product of one man, the club that for so long existed only as a local franchise for Lisbon giants Sporting CP decided to reinvent itself at the end of the 1990s and came up with the first crest and kit brand revamp in Portuguese football history. A change powered by the local Delta café company that brought a different shade of colours and emotions to Portugal’s top tier at the turn of the century.

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Sporting Clube Campomaiorense was originally founded in 1926. Football was beginning to make inroads in the sparsely populated Alentejo, and in the small town of Campo Maior, which sat right across the Spanish border, it quickly became a popular pastime alongside bullfighting.

Inspired by Sporting’s undisputed success of those years, both in the Lisbon District championship and the Campeonato de Portugal, locals decided to affiliate themselves with the club. Their crest resembled the same proud lion, and their colours and kit were borrowed from the Lisbon giants. Until the 1990s, nothing much happened in the town. The club fluctuated between the second and fourth tiers, never enjoying the same popularity as other Alentejo sides such as Elvas, Lusitano de Évora and Juventude de Évora.

By then, João Nabeiro, son of Manuel Nabeiro, a local businessman who started the coffee company Delta in the 1960s and soon became a symbol for the region, was already the club’s president, and he had big plans for Campomaiorense. Football had long since turned its back on the region south of Lisbon, except for Farense in the Algarve, but he was determined to put Campo Maior on the national map.

The company invested enough to gain promotion to the first tier in 1994/95 for the first time in its history. Quickly relegated, they came back stronger and remained a first division side for the rest of the century.

At the beginning, the club still sported the same green and white hoops that Sporting wore, but Nabeiro was on a soul-searching quest and in 1998 decided to revamp the club’s image altogether. Gone was the Sporting-based crest with the lion, and in came a new logo, with a greyhound – the most popular hunting dog in the region – and the yellow and reddish tones of the city’s rural landscape. They were also the colours sported by Delta, as the relationship between the club and the local company is impossible to separate.

In that 1998 summer, Campomaiorense presented their new crest alongside a new set of kits by the British sports firm Reebok. Little did they know they would become a landmark piece of clothing only a year later.

Reebok clearly wanted to create a model that mixed the club’s new identity with its sole sponsor. The brand opted for an all-round green shirt and shorts, but placed in the middle the huge sponsor of Delta Cafés, with their famous triangle, inside a red, yellow and white circle, the same colours that could be found on the new crest. The “Galgomania”, as it was called then by the sporting press, brought a colourful new look to what was a football league used to the same tones and templates. With a long white band on the upper shoulder, followed by the same template on the sides of the green shorts, the new Campomaiorense kit was one of the most avantgarde in the history of Portuguese football.

(Image: www.equipamentosvintage.blogspot.com)

Something few could have expected from a club that came from the rural interior, often depicted as conservative. Never had a sponsor had such a prominent role in a home kit but never a club, in the modern professionalised world of 1990s football, been so dependent on a single money backer. As an alternative kit, Reebok went for a kit that respected the inner colours of the new crest, with yellow and reddish hoops and red shorts with small green references on the sides, a kit that the side used when they faced the likes of Sporting, Rio Ave and Vitória Setúbal – all clubs that play in green – during the 1998/99 league edition.

(Image: https://www.footballkitarchive.com)

Campomaiorense finished that year’s campaign with a surprising 13th-place finish. Although the club had reached 11th in the previous season, nobody expected them to keep the same pace the following year, but what made that season and kit really special was the club’s run in the Portuguese Cup. They began by beating Sporting Braga, the previous year’s finalist, in the fourth round played in October with two goals from veteran Brazilian attacking playmaker Isaías and a third netted by their star-forward Laelson.

José Pereira’s side went on to beat Penafiel, Alverca away, before needing a replay at home and a tense penalty shootout to outdo Marítimo. The semi-final was easier as the side was drawn against third division outfit Esposende, whom they beat 0-2 away to clinch a ticket to the Jamor final. With all of the Big Three out of the Cup by February, they ended up playing Beira-Mar in the final. The Aveiro side had been relegated, and many trusted Campomaiorense could actually win the trophy, but a lone Ricardo Sousa goal made all the difference.

The 1999 Portuguese Cup final was played between Campomaiorense and Beira-Mar

The following season, Rebook kept the same kit structure, although the Delta logo was adapted to fit more in the centre, but Campomaiorense ended the campaign in 16th and were relegated back to the second division. They only played there for another year before Nabeiro decided to disband the professional football team, saying the company could no longer provide the funds required to keep on competing against the very best.

The club has since become a regular in the regional Alentejo league and has kept a youth team to support local youngsters in practising sports. For the novelty of the template, the colourful identity, and the what-if moment of that Jamor final, few kits resonate so powerfully with supporters in Portugal.

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s debt of gratitude to Campomaiorense

Campomaiorense may likely never play again in the top tier, and Alentejo surely won’t enjoy first division football any time soon, but the club that rescued Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s career by bringing him to Portugal, where he spent a year dazzling anyone who came across the Galgos after having been released by several Dutch clubs for insubordination, will never be forgotten.

Not least by the most famous player to ever wear the club’s kit. “If it wasn’t for Campo Maior and the Nabeiro family I wouldn’t be the Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink that I am today,” said the striker in an interview with Maisfutebol in 2023. After a successful season at Campomaiorense, Hasselbaink enjoyed an equally prodigious year at Boavista, his time in Portugal serving as the launchpad for a dazzling international career.