Politics, propaganda and the first Portuguese Super Cup | OneFootball

On Thursday evening the traditional curtain-raiser to a new football season in Portugal takes place in the Algarve as Sporting lock horns with Benfica in the Cândido de Oliveira Super Cup.

Portuguese football historian Miguel Lourenço Pereira brings us the fascinating snapshot of the one-off precursor to the competition. With the world at war and political manifestations at the heart of major sporting events, the National Stadium was inaugurated amid much pomp and circumstance.

Although football took something of a back seat as the regime’s propaganda machine went into overdrive on that baking summer afternoon, a fantastic festival of football ensued between Lisbon rivals Sporting and Benfica.

Backdrop of war

Four days before, the Allies had landed in Normandy to change forever the destiny of Europe. Cândido de Oliveira was still in jail for serving as an MI5 spy against the regime. FC Porto was entering a long drought of honours that would last a decade. And then there was the recently inaugurated new national ground, inspired by the works of Italian and German architects, built in the middle of nowhere in Oeiras.

Their former allies were falling apart, yet for António Oliveira de Salazar’s cabinet, everything needed to look the same. On June 10th, to celebrate Portugal’s national day, then known as Race Day, the government commissioned a trophy to be delivered to the winners of what was to be the precursor of the Portuguese Super Cup. SL Benfica and Sporting CP faced each other in front of thousands to earn the right to lift the often forgotten Império Cup.

Super Cup gains traction in Europe – Portugal slow to catch on

The Portuguese Super Cup officially started in 1980, after a test edition that took place with the go-ahead of the Football Federation, and pitted FC Porto and Boavista in a single match, played at das Antas and won by the Axadrezados. The idea was to emulate what had been happening all around Europe for decades, with a match that opened the season between the league winners and cup victors from the previous campaign.

The first time the idea of a Super Cup was devised was in 1908, when the English Football Association sanctioned a duel between the winners of the Football League – professionals – against the Southern League champion – amateurs. Later, in the 1930s, the concept was forever changed by placing the FA Cup winner facing the Football League champions in a single match to be played at Wembley at the beginning of the season. It went by many names in the years to come, but tradition stood firm and was soon exported elsewhere.

In 1940, Spain had their first Super Cup, although it would be suspended for almost three decades from 1953 onwards, while in France the first edition took place in 1955. Even UEFA allowed for the establishment of a European Super Cup from 1971 onwards, a trophy that had the European Cup champion battling the Cup Winners Cup winner, until that competition was swallowed by the UEFA Cup, whose holders took their place in the trophy that would open the continental tournament competitions.

Portugal, as usual, lagged way behind everyone else, and it was only officially in 1981, with a match between Porto and Benfica, after the Eagles had played Sporting in another unofficial tie the year before, that the Super Cup finally came into being.

However, looking back, one can unearth a competition that predated the modern concept of the Super Cup and that takes us back decades in time to a moment where Portugal’s isolationism was about to become clearer for those in power. Even if the regime, Salazar particularly, loathed the game, they soon understood its power within the masses and despite all the other prepared events for the Race Day of 1944, including the usual gymnastics and cycling trials, it was the football that had a multitude of people making the trek from Lisbon down to Oeiras to witness the first official match played in Jamor.

Salazar’s National Stadium project

The idea of building a national ground had been discussed since 1933. While Benfica were still without a ground of their own and Sporting played their home games at Campo Grande, with Belenenses boasting the best pitch in the land at das Salésias, it became clear that a bigger, better stadium was needed. Minister Duarte Pacheco, mainly responsible for all the construction works of grandeur of the 1930s and 1940s as part of an economic programme to redevelop the nation’s economy, was the main sponsor of the idea. The original blueprint followed the Berlin Olympiastadion and the Olimpico built in Rome by order of Benito Mussolini (Salazar’s greatest political inspiration) for the 1934 World Cup.

It would serve not only for football matches but for other sports as well and the initial idea was to have all Lisbon sides eventually playing there as well, as it happened in Italy. After much discussion, the Jamor valley was chosen as the venue, and construction began, slowly. The first works started in 1939, but it took five long years to finish, even if it lacked a stand, facing west, from the original concept of the famed architect Miguel Jacobetty Rosa. The idea was to use the Jamor park as a sports city, but the development of the areas around it had developed at an even slower pace, and the park became essentially known by the ground, christened Estádio de Honra do Centro Desportivo Nacional do Jamor and inevitably referred to as the much simpler National Stadium.

Everything was prepared to stage the opening on June 10th, and the Football Federation agreed on the idea of creating a cup to celebrate the day. They would name it the Império Cup, to reinforce the colonial importance of Portugal during those troubled times, and if the idea was always to have two Lisbon sides present, there was no better excuse than to use the model where the winners of the Portuguese League and the Portuguese Cup would meet each other.

Propaganda first, football to follow

Salazar’s cabinet brought in another trophy to deliver, the Estádio Cup, also to celebrate the day. All the big names of the regime were present. Salazar, as usual, gave his typical speech of law and order while the President of the Republic, Óscar Carmona, reminded everyone of the specialness of the Portuguese race and its superiority over the controlled colonial territories, as would be expected. Then came the football and a match for the ages.

There was no doubt that in the 1940s, both Benfica and Sporting were the strongest forces in the land, despite Belenenses having enjoyed some great seasons and FC Porto occasionally reminding everyone of who had been the league’s first champions. The duel between the two Lisbon greats was almost an inevitability, but it was fairly decided as the right match, taking into consideration the honours claimed that year by each side.

Sporting’s “Five Violins” begin to make their mark

Sporting were thriving with a generation of iconic players that would become known as the Cinco Violinos. Coached by Hungarian Josezf Szabo, the Lions had just signed the promising Albano from Seixal and Jesus Correia from Paços de Arcos. The great names of the 1930s, such as Soeiro or Pireza, were enjoying their final glory years, but a transitional side, as it was, was still able to claim the club’s second league title in their history. They won by five points over Benfica, a landslide, taking into consideration the previous season’s records, with Fernando Peyroteo, already their biggest star, as the key figure.

On their way to the title Sporting had only lost once all season, but that was at the Amoreiras ground, away to Benfica, so excitement was high regarding what to expect that afternoon at Jamor. The Eagles had routed any side that had opposed them during the Cup run, played once the league had finished. With Sporting ousted in the first round against Porto, they sailed through easily until the final day, when an inspiring display by their star forward Rogério had Benfica hammering Estoril by a clear 8-0, still the biggest ever win in the Cup final.

While Benfica were playing competitive matches during May, Sporting toured the interior and north of Portugal, expanding their popularity nationwide. On the 10th, the neighbours would be facing each other for the fifth time in the season after also playing in the Lisbon Championship in the Autumn. Sporting came in as favourites, but if there was a side able to rattle them, it was their city rivals.

Szabo held no cards and played with his strongest eleven, putting Azevedo in goal, followed by Cardoso and Manecas in defensive positions, while Canário, Otávio and Eliseu comprised the midfield in a typical 2-3-5 model. The attack frontline already included two future Violins, Albano and Peyroteo, with Adolfo, Cruz and Marques joining in. Marques was in terrible shape. His mother had passed away only the day before, and he had spent hours away at his family’s house, without eating, before joining his teammates hours before kick-off, although few were aware of it at the time.

Benfica’s Hungarian gaffer Janos Biri also called upon his favourite side, playing with Martins, César, Carvalho, Jacinto, Albino, Francisco Ferreira, Espirito Santo, Ársenio, Julinho, Rogério and Jaime. Under a blazing sun, after copious ceremonies that the player had to stand up for to follow protocol, the game finally got underway in front of more than eighty thousand supporters.

The inevitable Peyroteo dominates

Sporting dominated procedures from the start and almost inevitably Portugal’s greatest goalscorer ever, Fernando Peyroteo, scored the first of the new ground in the first minutes of the match. They kept on running into Martin’s goal, but a brilliant afternoon for the Benfica goalkeeper kept the result tight, and with less than fifteen minutes to go, the fascinating Guilherme Espírito Santo, Portugal’s first great black football icon, levelled the game. The match was forced into extra time with Peyroteo coming to the rescue, once more. He scored the second goal for Sporting and set up Eliseu for the third, with just ten minutes on the clock.

Julinho was still able to instil some panic on the Lions’ end by scoring to make it 3-2, but with only four minutes remaining, there would be no time for another leveller. The league champions had prevailed and were presented with the trophy, shaped with the Football Federation’s iconic blazon. Salazar and Carmona also took part in the awards ceremony as the crowds shouted the usual motto of “Salazar promises, Salazar delivers”, so common at any political rally of the time.

Political capital

In fact, that was what the match was all about, a political manifesto that used the Jamor inauguration like it did with so many sporting events of the following decades. Four years later, the stadium would be officially named as the designated ground for Cup finals, and it would also be used often by both the national side and by the main Lisbon clubs in different events. Sporting would play at the Jamor in the inaugural European Cup duel against Partizan, for instance.

Plans were drafted to make the event an annual game, but it never came to be. In the 1960s, there was a brief attempt to revive it, again with a duel between Sporting and Benfica, this time won by the Encarnados thanks to an astounding Eusébio strike, but that was it.

Portuguese football, like with so many other aspects of society, would have to wait for the new democratic regime to meet their European counterparts and enjoy their Super Cup, even if, until the early 2000s, it was often a strange affair with matches played abroad for several seasons and without garnering too much interest from supporters.

Thankfully, it was named after Cândido de Oliveira in recognition of Portugal’s leading football figure in the first half of the 20th century. A man who, when Sporting and Benfica were fighting for the Império Cup, was locked up in the concentration camp of Tarrafal, imprisoned by the same men who were hailed by the crowds. The cycle of hurt had finally been closed.