José Águas, Benfica’s pre-Eusébio goal machine | OneFootball

Football is made of moments. Of memories. Of photographs. There is only one player in the history of Portuguese football who was pictured holding aloft the European Cup trophy twice. José Águas enjoyed one of the most brilliant careers in the sport’s history. He began as a promising striker with nothing to lose and closed his playing days as a double king of Europe.

He also fathered an international forward, a pop singer and for generations represented what a Benfica club captain should be all about. Setting the example followed by the likes of Mário Coluna, Eusébio, Toni, Humberto Coelho and Manuel Bento all the way to João Vieira Pinto and Simão Sabrosa, he was one of the Eagles’ first recognisable superstars.

Out of Africa

Nowadays, people tend to look at a time when Portuguese football explored a gold mine in Africa and think of black African players. The likes of Eusébio, Coluna, Hilário, first, and then Jordão and the descendants of the old colonies, all the way to Éder, Rafael Leão or Nuno Mendes. Yet, the first African stars to populate and elevate the Portuguese game were whites, not blacks. Born in Africa from second or third generation families who had travelled from Europe to the colonies in the late 19th century, they were the first names continental scouts looked for when they began travelling to Angola and Mozambique in search of talent.

Fernando Peyroteo might have been the most famous of them all, but he was far from being the only one. José Águas, who was born in Luanda in 1930, was certainly among them. His parents had moved from Lisbon in search of a better life in Angola, but tragedy struck, and while in his early teens, Águas lost his father and was forced to start working at the age of 15 to help out his widowed mother. He enrolled in the Robert Hudson Ford car dealership in Lobito, where they lived, as a copy typist and soon made himself popular by playing alongside his fellow workmen in the company football squad, which competed in the local companies’ league. His skills didn’t go unnoticed, and soon the Lusitano de Lobito side gave him a trial, subsequently signing him to play for the first team despite being under 18.

From Ford to football

Águas wasn’t much of a football fan, but his love for Benfica was already indisputable, as everyone in his household was an Eagles supporter. His teen idol was Rogério Pipi, the first Portuguese player to move to Brazil, where he joined the iconic Heleno de Freitas in the Botafogo forward line. In 1950, Benfica ended the season by clinching their first international trophy, the Latin Cup. The tournament had started the previous season, with Sporting playing in the final against Barcelona, and in the following year the final four was staged in Lisbon. The Eagles beat Lazio in the semis and Bordeaux in the final after a replay and an endless extra time.

The news spread around the Portuguese empire, and the club was invited to schedule a tour in Mozambique and Angola to parade the trophy. When they arrived at Lobito, a best eleven was quickly assembled and Águas was part of it. Not only that, but he also scored two goals in a 3-1 win, quickly drawing the attention of Ted Smith, Benfica’s manager, who persuaded the board to sign him on the spot. He hardly had time to pack his things, sign off from the Hudson company and join the tour alongside his new teammates. Nobody knew yet, but for the following thirteen years, he would be Benfica’s most prolific scorer.

Spectacular debut

Águas debuted in the 1950/51 season and quickly left an imprint, scoring four past the Braga goalkeeper on his league debut. He finished the season with 26 goals to his name in just 22 matches. Only once, until the end of the decade, would he finish the season with more matches played than goals scored, a feat that earned him the award for best goalscorer of the Portuguese league five times. At first, he had to quarrel against the iconic Sporting side of the Five Violins, who won three titles in a row, with Benfica often finishing as runners-up. In 1954/55, he finally won his first league title for the Eagles Benfica completed a league and cup double, with Águas scoring 26 goals in just 32 games. Over the next half dozen years Águas was at the peak of powers, scoring at least 30 goals in five of the next six seasons (netting “only” 29 in 1958/59).

When Águas signed for Benfica, the team was still a semi-professional setup, but under Otto Glória, everything changed. The club had just inaugurated the Estádio da Luz, and Águas quickly became a fan favourite at the new ground. Glória heavily emphasised the importance of focus and discipline, also ordering the building of lodgings for the players at the club. The players who were unmarried lived there during the week and the married ones had to spend the weekend there. At the same time, higher salaries were paid and bigger bonuses earned if the team won the league or the cup, as full professionalisation swept through the club. The seeds for the great Benfica side were being planted with key signings like Mário Coluna, who replaced Rogério as Águas’ partner in the frontline in the mid-1950s, and Germano, who would boss the defence over the following years.

Clinical fox in the box

By 1953, Águas was already a Portuguese international, a call-up many believed came two years too late. He played 25 matches for the national side, a meagre number, a consequence of Portugal’s absence from the main sporting events, but he still managed to score eleven goals, two of them against England. He was a fine header of the ball, one of the best in Europe at the time, and had a great ability to know where the ball would land at every moment. He was not a great passer and rarely drifted out of position, but inside the box few were as feared as he. While Coluna moved up and down like a fire engine, Águas would escape his marker to find exactly the right moment to score and did so  with astounding regularity.

In 1959/60, now with Belá Guttman in charge, he led the side to another league title, but his golden hour was still to come. The following season, while Benfica once again wrapped up the league to win their first back-to-back championship titles in two decades, the side also surprised everyone by booking a place in the final of the European Cup. The Eagles managed to beat Hearts, Ujpesti Dozsa, AGF Aarhus and Rapid Vienna before travelling to Bern for a showdown against a much-favoured Barcelona.

Double European glory

Águas arrived in Switzerland as the tournament’s top scorer, with ten goals, but he soon added another one in the final to his name in a match that has become the stuff of legends as Benfica beat Barcelona 3-1. The Blaugranas opened the score, but the Luanda-born marksman tied the match in the first half and forced a Ramallets error, which turned into an own goal a minute later. Coluna scored a third and Barcelona got one back, but on three occasions the woodwork came to the rescue and the Lisbon giants became the first side other than Real Madrid to lift the trophy.

Many believed it had all been due to chance, but in the following season they were again in the final. Eusébio had been added to the attacking line, as had José Augusto and António Simões, and Benfica were once again much superior to their rivals up until the final played in Amsterdam. The opponents this time were the five-time winners Real Madrid, and Ferenc Puskás scored two early goals and a third right before half-time, but once again Águas came to the rescue. He netted in the 25th minute and assisted Cavém for Benfica’s second in the first half.

Later, he was a spectator to the Eusébio show, and when the young Mozambican won a penalty, with the game already tied, he relinquished the possibility of scoring a second after Eusébio went on to Coluna and asked him if he wouldn’t mind requesting “Mister Águas” to let him try his luck. He did, and his goal changed the game. Three minutes later Eusébio scored again direct from a free-kick, making the final score Benfica 5-3 Real Madrid. Like in the previous edition, Águas was Benfica’s top scorer and lifted the trophy, the only time a Portuguese team captain managed to do it on two different occasions.

Austrian venture

By then, José Águas was 32 and had fathered two sons, Elena and Rui. For the 1962/63 season, the new manager, Fernando Riera, seemed to be more inclined to give a young José Torres a place in the starting line-up, which didn’t endear him to the fans. Águas played only thirteen games that season, scoring eight goals, and was absent from the final against AC Milan, which the Eagles lost. The time to say goodbye had arrived, but then he received a surprise offer from Austria Vienna after the club’s board had witnessed his brilliant offensive skills in a continental tie against their rivals Rapid, two years earlier.

The forward became one of the first Portuguese players to move abroad, if only for a season, where he scored two goals in eight matches. Homesick, now 35 years old, Águas called it a day and received a testimonial from his former club worthy of his legacy. Only Eusébio has scored more goals with the Eagles shirt on.

Famous offspring

Sadly for him, Portugal were never able to produce the kind of performances that would have had him play in a World Cup and the first season after he retired, they booked a place in the 1966 World Cup that he watched from a distance. A beloved player among the Benfiquistas, Águas was never much of a football fan, once famously saying that he went to each match with the same mentality he had gone to work with as a kid in the Hudson car dealer stand. He tried to become a manager in the 1960s, but it never worked out for him despite stints at Marítimo, Atlético and Leixões.

His daughter Elena (pictured fronting the band Atlântida) turned out to be more of an artistic mind, and in the early 1980s became one of Portugal’s most followed pop stars as Lena D’Água. Her younger brother Rui, though, followed in his father’s footsteps. Starting at Benfica’s youth academy, he was first let go as a teenager and then signed in 1985, after impressing with Portimonense. For three years, he became one of the Eagles’ top scorers, playing in the 1988 European Cup final like his father did, albeit with worse memories.

He then did the unthinkable and moved to Porto, where he scored forty goals in two seasons, before returning to Benfica, where he once again played until 1994, winning two league titles. Called up to the Mexico 86 World Cup, he was Portugal’s leading attacker for the rest of the decade, enjoying a career not at his father’s level but on a superior level than his cousin Raul Águas, who also played for Benfica in the 1970s but turned out to be more known as a manager in the 1990s.

Benfica’s legacy builder

José Águas passed away in 2000 at the age of 70. One of the few strikers in the history of the game to have as many goals as matches played at the senior level, he was the first name that came to mind at a time when Benfica finally embraced their position as Portugal’s biggest sporting force, overcoming their Lisbon rivals.

The 1950s were a turning point in the history of the club, and José Águas left his indelible mark as Benfica became a name synonymous with football all over the world. It was Águas who did as much as anybody to pave the way for the likes of Eusébio and later generations to keep up Benfica’s tradition of one of Europe’s most respected clubs.