TAD overturns €17,850 fine for FC Porto over ‘Dragões Diário’ piece | OneFootball

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAD) upheld the appeal lodged by FC Porto and annulled the sanction imposed by the Disciplinary Board (CD) of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), following statements about refereeing published in the Dragões Diário newsletter.

The disciplinary proceedings that led to the penalty now revoked were based on a complaint filed by the FPF’s Refereeing Board on 18 February 2026. At issue were comments published in the Porto club’s newsletter after the match between Sporting and Famalicão. The sentence that gave rise to the sanction was: “It seems that someone is in charge of refereeing in Portugal, and it is clearly not its officials.”

At the time, the FPF’s Disciplinary Board held that the statements, introduced in the text by the expression “it may seem like a joke, but it is not,” harmed the honor and reputation of the bodies within the sporting structure.

In the ruling now made public, the majority of the arbitral panel concluded that FC Porto had not committed any disciplinary offence. The decision was based on the right to freedom of expression and stressed that the statements must be viewed in the context of the so-called “language of football,” which is usually harsher and more forceful because of the passions associated with the sport.

Arbitrators José Ricardo Gonçalves and Sónia Carneiro considered that those responsible for refereeing, as public figures subject to constant scrutiny, must have a greater ability to deal with this type of criticism. In the court’s view, the sentence amounted to an expression of protest and a sporting attack on a rival, and was not understood as a gratuitous offence to the honor of those concerned.

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