One-season wonders series – Part I: União Lisboa, Oliveirense, União de Coimbra | OneFootball

Portuguese football is full of fantastic stories that rarely reach the spotlight. In a nation dominated by the sheer power and influence of the Big Three, even the success tales of the likes of Boavista, Braga or Belenenses – The Big B’s – seldom get the attention they deserve. If you dare to travel to the bottom of the football pyramid, it gets worse. That is why we are dwelling in this three-part series exclusively on the teams that only got the chance to play in the first division for a single season.

Seventy-three Portuguese football clubs have played at least once in the top tier, and nine did so only once. These are clubs that had their shot and missed, yet the experience was both ephemeral and memorable. Whether it was because the football was so different they couldn’t cope, because of the nature of their promotion from the second tier, or owing to ill-fated decisions and/or cases of “too much too soon”, their stories deserve to be told and remembered nonetheless.

Part I takes us to the days of the football league under the fascist regime, looking back at three clubs that represented different regions and connections to the game, both then and now.

The origins of the Portuguese Primeira Liga

For decades, the Portuguese Football Federation marked 1938/39 as the year when everything changed. A much-needed revamp of the national competitions brought an end to the Campeonato de Portugal – the first official national competition in the land – and the experimental league that had taken place for the previous four campaigns, as the Portuguese Cup and the Portuguese First Division competitions were created. As the FPF never officially took a definitive position regarding the competitions that ended that summer of 1938, there are still doubts today as to whether the Campeonato de Portugal was the predecessor of the league, and whether their winners should be recorded for posterity as national champions as well, or even if the winners of the Portuguese Cup with its knockout model should have been considered national champions at the time.

The experimental league was something else entirely. It was devised to test the possibility of a league competition in a similar fashion to what had taken place in Spain since 1929 (itself inspired by the English First Division) after Portugal had suffered a 9-0 thrashing at the hands of their Iberian neighbours. The competition brought together representatives of the country’s most important regional tournaments: Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Setúbal. For four seasons, it was played after the district leagues and before the Campeonato de Portugal, between January and May, and the winners were crowned league champions, although the winners of the Campeonato de Portugal, a much more popular event due to its twelve-year life span, were still named the Portuguese champions.

For that inaugural edition, it was defined that the eight participants would come from the different regional leagues, with Lisbon having four vacant spots, Porto two, and Coimbra and Setúbal one representative each. Académica de Coimbra, Vitória FC, FC Porto, Académico do Porto, Sporting, Benfica and Belenenses were joined by União Lisboa, a club that had a rich history of its own.

União Lisboa

Founded in 1910, as the Monarchy’s days were numbered, the club became one of many that embraced the popularity of football in the capital, at a time when both Sporting and Benfica were already trading blows, but there was still a Belenenses and a Casa Pia to challenge them. Their first memorable moment, after spending almost two decades fighting in the Lisbon district league, was their 1929 Campeonato de Portugal campaign. The black and whites, who embraced the official colours of the capital as their own, climbed all the way to the final to face their city rivals Belenenses. It was a memorable campaign that started north, winning ties against the likes of Espinho, Beira-Mar and Leça before a showdown in the final versus Sporting. The Lions were clear favourites, but União Lisboa proved to be the better side and progressed, before they were beaten by a single goal against Belenenses in the final.

Yet, they remained a respected force in the following years and in 1934, as the country lived its first full year under the new Estado Novo regime headed by António de Oliveira Salazar, they came third in the Lisbon regional league. That meant a passport to play in the first experimental league which would take place during the winter and early spring months, a novelty that appealed greatly to the club that played in the borough of Alcântara, at the popular Santo Amaro ground.

“Group of 15” see their club compete at the top

The side that had been founded by 15 friends – the Group of 15, as they became known – was always popular in the area but never spread to other parts of the capital, which explains the lack of recognition it got as time went by. For that 1934/35 campaign, they weren’t expected to perform to heights, though. On their debut, União Lisboa travelled to Porto, and came away with a 3-3 draw against Académico, the city’s second most important club at the time, ahead of the likes of Boavista and Salgueiros.

The second round brought title contenders Benfica to Santo Amaro and, once again, União Lisboa caused a surprise by grabbing a draw. Soundly beaten by Vitória FC, Belenenses, FC Porto and Sporting, União had to wait for March 3rd to celebrate their first-ever win at the top, a 3-1 beating of Académica in Coimbra. A much-celebrated triumph followed, a 5-2 demolition of Académico do Porto, as the competition moved to its second and decisive half. It was not be their last taste of victory, though. Beaten by Benfica, Belenenses, Sporting and Porto, who were still fighting for the title, they finished the campaign with a win against Académica de Coimbra, thanks to a Machado solo goal. The victory meant União Lisboa had 8 points to their name in fourteen matches played. Porto had won the league with 22, two more than Sporting and three more than Benfica. União Lisboa was considered the best of the lower sides, outranking both Académico do Porto and Académica de Coimbra, who finished last.

União morph into Atlético

It was a decent campaign, but it was also the club’s last at the top. The Experimental League meant there were no promotions or relegations as clubs got their ticket from their results in the regional leagues. Over the following three seasons, União Lisboa never again managed to finish in the top four of the Lisbon district championship. And there is also a reason you don’t know much about them, as they disappeared in 1942. Although they did so only partially. That year, as the world plunged into a world war, two popular sides from Alcântara decided it was time to join forces in the hope of becoming more competitive in a town dominated by Benfica, Sporting and Belenenses. Carcavelinhos, who also had a memorable tenure in the 1920s and early 1930s, joined União Lisboa as both sides agreed to merge under a new name: Atlético Clube de Portugal.

União Lisboa gave rise to historical club Atlético Clube de Portugal, this lineup shortly after the club were formed as a merger between União Lisboa and Carcavelinhos (Photo: www.zerozero.pt)

Atlético, who currently play in the third tier, soon became one of the most popular sides in Lisbon and was promoted to the first division three years later, playing a total of 24 campaigns at the highest level, finishing third as their best result. Their final season at the top was in 1976/77. Since then they have remained a popular side in the lower tiers, more recently getting international recognition for the sheer beauty of their football kits. União Lisboa – not to be confused with Unidos de Lisboa, a totally different football institution – had a short lifespan of just thirty years but it was enough to play a Campeonato de Portugal final. That equates to a runners-up spot in the league if the competition ever gets recognized as the official predecessor of the football league. União then got to enjoy a very decent season in the first experimental league edition. Talk about making history without a fuss.

Oliveirense

Football in the Aveiro region is full of great stories, memorable clubs and regional rivalries. In a small chunk of land clubs who stretch from Agueda and Aveiro in the south of the district, up to Santa Maria da Feira, Espinho, Ovar, Lourosa, Arouca, São João da Madeira and Oliveira de Azeméis up north, have developed a subculture that explains how the Portuguese know have come to passionately embrace the game. The first time Beira-Mar, the region’s most renowned club, played in the first tier was in the early 1960s, but despite their celebrity status as the club from the region’s capital, they weren’t the first club from the district to take their shot at the top.

That honour remains in the hands of Oliveirense. The Oliveira de Azeméis side, which recently became a second-tier regular, has spent most of its sporting life jumping between the third and second tiers. Oliveira de Azeméis sits at the heart of the industrial belt of the region that stretches from Feira to São João da Madeira, and enjoyed a brief moment of glory in the 1940s as football expanded in Portugal, and so did the football league. Long gone were the days of the experimental tournament as the football league embraced the new model officially in 1938 and years later kicked off the second-tier competition so that there was the possibility of clubs being relegated and promoted instead of relying on the results of the district leagues.

Top tier enlarged, Oliveirense take their chance

That decision killed the regional competitions, stalwarts of the national game for decades, but also paved the way for sides of regions that had been ignored for too long to test themselves against the very best. Yet, before they made it official, the authorities decided to expand the number of participants in the top tier to twelve, paving the way for one representative from Portalegre and another from Aveiro to take part. It would be the last season without a promotion/relegation system, and Oliveirense won their golden ticket by beating the competition in the district league of Aveiro mercilessly.

Oliveirense debuted alongside Elvas in the event, but their campaign would not be one for the ages. While the Portalegre side managed to accumulate 17 points, finishing a respectable eighth, three points below former league winners FC Porto, Oliveirense win only eight points in twenty-two matches played. Their debut couldn’t have been worse as they travelled to Olhão to be beaten heavily by the locals 8-1 in the Algarve, with Zeca scoring the side’s first goal in the top tier. When Elvas came north to rout them in their first home match, supporters realised the experience would be a painful one. They weren’t wrong.

Oliveirense lineup in the 1945/46 season (Photo: www.gloriasdopassado.blogspot.com)

Double-figure defeat

Their first win came only at the seventh round, a 1-0 home triumph against Vitória SC, and they would only win two more matches in the whole competition, at home against Boavista and Vitória FC. A 10-0 defeat at the hands of Belenenses was their worst performance of the season as they ended the campaign with 73 goals against, scoring only 22. The following season, with the new promotion system in place, Oliveirense was unable to bounce back, and they haven’t been able to do so since. In the 1960s, Beira-Mar finally rose to the top, becoming the most important side in the region after years of underperforming, and progressively so did Feirense, Sporting Espinho and eventually Arouca, all three with first-division experience over the years.

Oliveirense is now a well-respected second-tier club, and even if it seems they won’t be getting back to the top any time soon, the fact that they were the first club from the centre of Portugal not from Coimbra to play at the highest level is still a feat worth remembering.

União de Coimbra

Coimbra has forever been associated with Académica. The club from the students’ academy for decades before turning into an independent football institution in the late 1970s onwards, they were the first Cup winners, played in several other finals, eventually reclaiming the trophy, and remain a top-ten side in terms of number of seasons in the top tier – 64 in total – ranking above former league champions Boavista, for example.

Yet, despite the popularity of the all-blacks, the city has long been a two-club venue, even if the celebrity and exploits of União de Coimbra shrink in comparison with their bigger neighbours. The blue and red side was founded in 1919, years after Académica first took shape. While Académica were the club for the students, most of whom resided only briefly in town before returning home, União became rooted within the local merchant and industrial fabric.

Long wait finally over

Known as the Unionistas, their first decades were spent fighting Académica in the Coimbra district league, with some memorable performances in the Campeonato de Portugal, before plummeting into the second and third divisions when the football pyramid was reorganised in the late 1940s. They were on the brink of promotion in 1945, but ended up beaten by Estoril, who finally took their place at the top table. It seemed their best shot had gone, when everything changed come the 1971/72 campaign.

As the city was still experiencing the backlash of the 1969 students revolt that had the army surrounding its borders for weeks, while Académica cruised to a memorable Cup final, União started to punch above their weight and during that season’s campaign they came on top of the second-tier north division, at a time when there were just the south and north leagues, getting the better of Riopele and Marinhense by one and two points respectively. They not only got promoted to the first tier but also went on to beat Montijo 2-1, with two goals from Niza, to claim the Second Division league title for the first time in their history in a final played in Tomar that opposed the winners of the south and north leagues.

União de Coimbra lineup in the 1972/73 season (Photo: www.gloriasdopassado.blogspot.com)

Derby days denied

There were high expectations about a Coimbra duel at the top tier for the first time in history, but, against all odds, Académica got relegated at the very last breath of the campaign, depriving Portuguese football of a match that would have been remembered for years to come. As sole representatives of the nation’s third city, many were curious about how União would perform, but they only claimed five wins out of thirty matches to finish 14th. The played most of their home matches at the Municipal de Coimbra, the famed Calhabé, instead of the Arregaça, their usual home ground, which probably explained why they felt so out of depth.

Their final position meant they weren’t relegated automatically but had to play a six-match league tournament alongside Montijo against second-tier sides for a place in the next season’s top division. Only two of the six would get their ticket to glory, and, sadly, União de Coimbra finished last on goal difference. All four sides claimed six points, but Oriental won the mini tournament with more goals scored, and Montijo claimed second place ahead of Varzim due to their direct results, as they had equal goal difference.

The big boys in town

It was the first and last experience of União at the top and to add insult to injury, Académica had just won the second tier smoothly, and they were promoted directly, meaning there would be no Coimbra derby in the following campaign either. They never again got that far and a few years later dropped all the way down to the third tier, where they spent the following decades. In 2007 the situation got worse as União de Coimbra were relegated for the first time to the regional leagues and was forced to change its name to União 1919 to avoid closure.

Their golden days are long gone, as are those of their city neighbours who compete in the third tier, but they remain proud for having been the sole representatives of the city in the top tier for a year, when for once they didn’t feel like the small team in the town.