Rio Ave join Porto in slamming Liga Portugal over farcical situation | OneFootball

Liga Portugal has changed the schedule for Matchday 7: the Famalicão vs Rio Ave match, initially set for September 29 at 8:15 pm, has been moved forward to 8:30 pm on September 28, in a swap with the Arouca vs FC Porto game. After FC Porto released a statement regarding the situation—prompted by the Harvest Fair in Arouca—Rio Ave also spoke out, criticizing the change which deprives them of a day of preparation.

Here is the full statement from Rio Ave: «Having been confronted with a unilateral change to the scheduling of the Famalicão vs Rio Ave FC match, part of the 7th round of Liga Portugal Betclic, originally set for September 29, Rio Ave Futebol Clube – Futebol, SAD would like to clarify the following:

1. Under the regulations protecting Portuguese teams participating in European competitions, Rio Ave FC had its Matchday 1 game against SL Benfica, at Luz, postponed to September 23, a Tuesday, which created a microcycle of three games in just over a week, since Matchday 6 is on September 19, against FC Porto, and Matchday 7, against FC Famalicão, on September 29.

2. This scheduling was finalized and communicated by Liga Portugal on September 5 and 6, through the official match scheduling and time confirmation statements, numbers 53 and 55, respectively.

3. On September 16, Rio Ave FC SAD was informed by the League of the intention to change the date of the Matchday 7 game, moving it forward to Sunday, September 28, citing the existence of an exceptional regime that forced the postponement of the FC Arouca vs FC Porto game to Monday.

4. The exception pointed out by the League, allegedly supported by Article 44, number 3, of the Competition Regulations, concerns the supposed lack of security conditions for the FC Arouca vs FC Porto match, since on the same day the Arouca Harvest Fair takes place, an annual event that is part of the city’s festivities and has been held since 1944, near the stadium. It should be noted that this event has been announced for several months and, for many years, has been a point of attention regarding the scheduling of FC Arouca’s home games.

5. From the outset, Rio Ave FC SAD, directly to the President of Liga Portugal, Reinaldo Teixeira, expressed total and absolute disagreement with the proposed change. Another change to the previously defined schedule is clearly detrimental to our sporting plan, as we are ten days away from the match in question and an already tight microcycle is made even worse, since we now play three games in nine days, two of them away from home, consecutively, with unequal circumstances compared to our opponent. On the other hand, Rio Ave FC SAD believes that we are not facing an exceptional situation, but rather the inability of Liga Portugal, given information that has been known for years regarding this Fair and its consequences on match scheduling in Arouca, to anticipate the problem and schedule the rounds with the necessary and required care.

6. Neither Liga Portugal nor the television broadcaster showed any willingness to, for example, hold both games in question on Monday, September 29, using the time slots duly provided for in the regulations.

7. It is up to Liga Portugal to take responsibility for such a ludicrous situation, by exposing such a large industry to the fragility of being conditioned by the holding of a Fair, scheduled in time and place, with more than enough notice for all of this to have been entirely avoidable. Rio Ave FC SAD hopes that, in the future, Liga Portugal will turn words into actions and truly uphold the values it claims to defend, particularly credibility, so that we can indeed have competitions of excellence and that episodes like this, with clear harm to sports organizations, do not happen again».

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