Iconic kits: Beira-Mar in the early 1990s | OneFootball

No nonsense! Beira-Mar centre-back Dinis Resende flies into a tackle against Benfica’s Paulo Sousa in the 1992/93 season.Beira Mar would win the match at their mythical Estádio Mário Duarte 1-0

1999 was a year of mixed feelings for the people of Aveiro. Yes, they celebrated the local club’s first major silverware as Beira-Mar came out on top against Campomaiorense to claim the Portuguese Cup in a surprise final at Jamor, but they had also been relegated to Division Two weeks earlier.

A decade earlier, however, football was finally starting to reconnect with one of the country’s most often forgotten districts at a moment when Aveiro itself was beginning to climb from oblivion, taking the right steps to become what it is today: one of the most vibrant and modern mid-sized cities in the country.

During those years, the yellow and black colours of Beira-Mar put the city on the map once again, not only by returning to the first division after years of absence but also by playing in their first-ever cup final. That memorable football shirt became forever intertwined with those golden years of the Alvinegros as well as part of the popular culture of the 1990s.

Despite having been founded in the early 1920s and having counted briefly with Eusébio in their ranks in the mid-1970s, few events had made Sport Club Beira-Mar a memorable force in Portuguese football. They weren’t the first club from their district to be promoted to the top tier, and for some time they weren’t even the best side in a region that also included the likes of Sporting Espinho, Feirense, Oliveirense, Águeda, Ovarense and Sanjoanense, to name but a few. Their first spell in the top tier was short, between 1971 and 1974, as the club plunged back into the second division for more than a decade, as football was developing fast not only in the Aveiro district but mainly north of the River Douro.

By 1988, however, things started to change. Aveiro’s university became more popular during the decade as new educational centres developed outside of the Lisbon-Coimbra-Porto axis, and the city’s economy, fuelled mainly by the canned food industry, was benefiting from Portugal’s recent inclusion in the common market of the EEC.

Establishing their top-tier status

By the 1987/88 campaign, Beira-Mar got promoted back to the first division with a side coached by the Belgian Jean Thissen, who had Victor Urbano as his assistant. They finished second in the central division, below Académico de Viseu and four points clear of Torreense and União de Leiria, after years of failure. On their first season back at the top, Beira-Mar finished a creditable 15th, a point clear of the relegation zone, in a season when five sides were relegated to restore an 18-team league.

In 1989/90, things improved drastically, particularly when Victor Urbano was promoted to first team coach, guiding the Alvinegros to a comfortable 11th place in the league table. The side added Egyptian international Abdel Al Ghany to their ranks and the former club legend António Sousa, who had just been let go by FC Porto. Alongside centre-backs Dinis and Petar Petrov, former Sporting international Mário Jorge, the veteran Paquito Saura and striker Penteado, it looked like a fine side, expected to drive through the 1990/91 season unharmed. That would also be the season when Beira-Mar decided to switch shirt sponsors.

Based near Aveiro, Levira took its name from one of the tributaries that flowed into the River Vouga, which feeds Aveiro lagoon before swimming into the Atlantic. It was a small, local company, and as with everything regarding Portuguese football at the time, stitched together the bond between the local club, the local fandom and the booming local commercial enterprises. There was still no room for globalisation in the Portuguese game.

Keeping it local

The club had been previously sponsored by a butcher’s, Talhos Campos, and now embraced a more industrial blueprint. A locally based company New Sports provided the manufactured kits and shorts, with black gaining more relevance on the shirt than it used to for the 1990/91 season. Until then, only the collar was black as Beira-Mar shirts were almost exclusively yellow (see the Eusébio picture above) but the brand made a small adjustment by adding two thick diagonal black stripes of black from the shoulders to the armpit, to bring a sense of modernity at a time when the biggest names in the market, namely Adidas, Puma, Umbro and Hummel were starting to experiment with new designs and templates. Beira-Mar couldn’t afford a deal with any of those world-class brands, but they could feel like they were part of a new wave by embracing a more modern football shirt style.

Beira-Mar’s kit for the 1991-92 season (Image: footballkitarchive.com)

Levira, the sponsor, was placed at the centre, in all-black as the collar and trims were also painted black, as were the shorts, while socks remained yellow and black as was historically traditional. The shirt’s polyester design also meant there were two shades of yellow stripes to lend it a sense of movement, and for some occasions the sponsor’s name was printed with a white background, instead of the customary black letters. The alternative kit remained all-white, as it had been the season before, but it was used only once, when the team travelled to Funchal to meet União da Madeira.

The season soon became the most memorable one in the club’s history, with the forward Dino brought from Nacional now added to the attacking line alongside Jorge Silvério, who became the side’s top scorer. Urbano often played Hélder in goal, with Dinis, Redondo, China and Oliveira at the back, Sousa and Abdel Ghany in creative roles, with José Ribeiro providing support and Silverio, Dino and Tozé Ribeiro giving offensive prowess. Despite starting the season with four consecutive draws, Beira-Mar soon found their form and ended the campaign sixth in the standings, their best result ever.

European football missed by a whisker

Only a defeat against Benfica on the last day of the season prevented them from finishing one place higher in the league table which would have meant qualification for the UEFA Cup. They would have played Zinedine Zidane’s Cannes at the Estádio Mário Duarte but instead the French team went to the Bessa to meet Salgueiros.

However, better than the sixth-place finish was Beira-Mar managing to surprise everyone by making it to the Portuguese Cup final for the first time in their history. They did so by beating Fafe, União da Madeira, Estrela da Amadora, Ovarense and Boavista in the semis before facing FC Porto in the Jamor final. It was the highlight of a memorable campaign, even if the side finished on the losing side after taking the Dragons to extra time, thus missing the possibility of enjoying European football for the second time in a fortnight.

The Beira-Mar team photo at Jamor ahead of the 1991 Portuguese Cup final. Porto won 3-1 after extra time.

For the 1991/92 campaign, New Sport decided to keep the same kit template as the club renewed sponsorship with Levira. The season wasn’t as brilliant as the one before, but Beira-Mar finished 8th, sustaining the good sensations from the previous campaign. For the 1991/92 season the sponsorship of Levira was enhanced with the company name appearing mainly with a white background to become more visible.

By 1992, the sustained success of the previous campaigns led the club to finally sign with a high-profile sports manufacturer. New Sport was gone and Hummel came into the picture and they would provide the club’s kits for the following three campaigns, before moving briefly to Olympic and then Umbro for the end of the decade until they moved to the smaller MPH who manufactured the famous 1998/99 kit that supporters still revere due to the Portuguese Cup win at the end of that season.

Beira-Mar’s sustained success on the pitch led to a deal with major kit manufacturer Hummel in 1992 (Image: footballkitarchive.com) 

New Sport disappeared from the football market in the mid-1990s, and the club also replaced the popular Levira sponsorship with Vulcano. Beira-Mar were a regular top-tier side in the 1990s, making both the Mário Duarte ground and the Black and Yellow club shirts part of the popular culture. The city itself started to attract more attention up to the point that the “Portuguese Venice” tag began to be used more often, helping transform Aveiro into one of the most popular tourism destinations in the land over the following decade.

Beira-Mar’s future was darker than anyone could have imagined back then. The club has spent the past decade in the lower leagues after being relegated due to financial issues. They haven’t been able to step up since, performing nowadays in the local district league, a grim situation for a side that played two Cup finals, winning one of them. The Aveiro district is today represented at the highest level by the small town of Arouca, and in the second tier by the likes of Feirense and Oliveirense.

With their iconic stadium long gone, memories of those glorious afternoons still live in the memory of locals. Many expect that someday that iconic yellow and black shirt will once again find its way among the elite of Portuguese football as it did during those halcyon days in the early nineties.