Why Portugal’s middle-class teams fail in Europe | OneFootball

Over the past decade, we’ve seen quite a few Portuguese teams take European football by storm and enjoy deep runs in knockout competitions. Benfica made it all the way to the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals in 2022 and 2023, losing to eventual runners-up Liverpool and Inter. Porto also qualified for the final eight in 2019 and 2021, losing to eventual champions Liverpool and Chelsea, whilst Sporting reached the Round of 16 in 2022, where they fell to Manchester City. As for Braga, they’ve emerged as a perennial contender in the UEFA Europa League, advancing to the quarterfinals in 2022 where they would fall to Rangers.

However, dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that the sides outside of Portugal’s four strongest teams have struggled to make an impact in continental football. But just why are Portugal’s smaller sides failing to assert themselves in Europe? Let’s take a look.

Take a quick scroll through a map of Europe, and you’ll find a number of locations from Leverkusen to Bergamo to Villarreal to Birmingham where teams that, despite not pertaining to their league’s upper echelon, have been able to make considerable strides on the continental front and even challenge for silverware. However, that hasn’t been the case in Europe’s westernmost member. Here, teams are expected to know their place and not fly too close to the sun. These class of teams struggling to perform on the European stage is as authentically a Portuguese thing as enjoying a plate of bacalhau and a glass or port wine whilst taking in a fado performance.

Starting in 1984/85, three Portuguese teams, rather than two, would qualify for the UEFA Cup, whilst two other teams would compete in the European Cup and Cup Winners’ Cup, respectively. Between 1984/85 and 1998/99, all three teams failed to make it past the first round of the UEFA Cup every single year. This changed with the onset of the millennium, with two teams qualifying for the UEFA Champions League and two qualifying for the UEFA Cup. On every single occasion, one team fell in the first round of the UEFA Cup, whilst the other fell in the qualifying rounds. There have been plenty of modifications to Europe’s footballing competitions in the past quarter-century, but one thing that has remained the same is the minnows getting destroyed in continental cups. It’s why, for far too many Portuguese teams like Paços de Ferreira, qualifying for Europe is a curse, rather than a blessing.

Poverty trap

You can even argue it is similar to the concept of the “Poverty Trap” where clubs may be better off limiting their ambitions rather than aspiring for success overseas and ending up worse off for it.

Paços played in Europe for the first time in 2007/08, losing 1-0 on aggregate to Dutch side AZ Alkmaar in the first round of the UEFA Cup, before falling 2-0 to Israeli side Bnei Yehuda in the third round of UEFA Europa League qualifying in 2009/10. They returned four years later, losing 8-3 on aggregate to Russian heavyweights Zenit Saint Petersburg in the UEFA Champions League qualifiers, before losing three and drawing three of their Europa League group stage fixtures vs. Pandurii Târgu Jiu, Fiorentina and FC Dnipro. It took them eight years to return to Europe, with the Beavers recording their first-ever European win and demolishing Larne 4-1 before beating Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 in the first leg of the playoff round. However, it was Nuno Espírito Santo’s side who had the last laugh, with Spurs winning the second leg 3-0 and booking their ticket for the UEFA Europa Conference League group stage.

“What often happens is that when a club manages to reach a European competition, it means that it performed very well because it had a good coaching staff and good players,” stated Paços de Ferreira president Rui Abreu in an exclusive PortuGOAL interview. “Generally, in Portugal, these projects, which end up gaining fame, are easily dismantled, because a team with better financial conditions comes looking for the coach, or 2-3 essential players end up being transferred to other clubs and you struggle to maintain that previous structure which was successful for the following year. Then comes the inability to find talents with the same quality, which is then reflected in poor European performances.”

Whereas lesser-known teams from other countries have managed to take advantage of the Conference League and go far in Europe, Portuguese teams haven’t been able to do so. Santa Clara and Paços de Ferreira both suffered elimination in the inaugural Conference League qualifiers in 2021/22; the following year, both sides were relegated to the second division. Paços, having spent four straight seasons in the top-flight before enduring relegation, now find themselves tasked with avoiding relegation to the third division. After edging Belenenses in the promotion/relegation playoff last year to survive in the second tier, the Beavers currently occupy the relegation playoff spot with five points from seven.

Vitória break the curse… before normal service is resumed

Both Vitória and Gil Vicente failed to reach the group stage of the Conference League in 2022/23, with the latter narrowly avoiding the drop by four points the following year. Worse was to come in 2023/24 with neither Arouca nor Vitória even advancing to the playoff round. Things finally turned around in 2024/25 as Vitória made it past three qualifying rounds and became the first Portuguese side to reach the league stage of the Conference League. The Conquistadores finished second in the 36-team table and qualified for the Round of 16, where they lost 6-2 to Real Betis.

Santa Clara pipped Vitória to Portugal’s lone Conference League place on the final day of last season. The Azorean outfit battled through two qualifiers to the playoff, but failed to overcome Irish outfit Shamrock Rovers. Therefore, in five years since the inception of UEFA’s third-tier European competition, only once has a Portuguese team managed to qualify for the group/league phase.

“Vitória are an exception to the rule here because they’re a club that already participates extensively in European competitions,” stated Abreu. “They know perfectly well how to plan for a participation in a UEFA club competition. I remember being involved in the organisation at Paços in the Conference League, where we lost to Tottenham. It is very complicated to manage a club of our size. The structure is very small, and the same person has to do many tasks. I remember when we were in the European competitions, I would enter the stadium at seven in the morning and leave at one in the morning, and this also ends up being reflected a little bit in the main team, because we’re definitely going to make mistakes with the senior side.

“This whole set-up means clubs cannot routinely go to Europe as they lose some of their best assets, including the coaches. The following year, it is very difficult to maintain the level, and some teams even end up going down to the second division.”

Boom and bust

We’ve seen quite a few Portuguese sides suffer this same brutal twist of fate – earning a rare European qualification, losing key assets in the summer, and then collapsing both on the continental and domestic front. For example, in 2019/20, Rio Ave edged Famalicão to the final European spot at the very last second after finishing fifth in the table. They proceeded to lose key attacking figures like Mehdi Taremi and Nuno Santos as well as manager Carlos Carvalhal, with Portugal’s biggest sides avariciously feasting on the Vila de Conde side’s internal organs.

The following season Rio Ave looked set to qualify for the UEFA Europa League group stage until conceding a 120th-minute equalizer to Milan and losing a 24-penalty shootout; merely eight months later, Rio Ave were relegated to the second tier after 13 straight years in the top-flight. Others, like Arouca, have been more fortunate. After qualifying for Europe for the first time ever, Arouca lost various indispensable players like Antony, Jerome Opoku, João Basso and Oday Dabbagh, but they would nevertheless bounce back from an early relegation battle and finish comfortably in seventh.

“No club in Portugal, except for the big clubs, can generate revenues that are greater than the expenses,” added Abreu. “You’re always trying to do magic every month to get resources, to pay salaries and cover the club’s expenses. Obviously, the panorama of Portuguese football is absolutely incomparable to other leagues where the funds are incomparably higher, but, mainly, there is a smaller difference between clubs in those countries. The Liga Portugal team that receives the most money from TV rights is going to earn 15, 16 or 17 times more than the team that’s earning the least amount of TV revenue, which also reduces our competitiveness.

“It’s even worse when you go from the first division to the second division. If we were in the top flight this season, Paços would receive €4.1 million in TV revenue, whereas we’re making €600,000 in the second tier right now. It’s even worse if you drop down to Liga 3, where you don’t get anything.”

Ultimately, as long as these enormous financial disparities continue to exist, for the majority of middle to small-sized clubs in Portugal qualifying for Europe will continue to be regarded as a poisoned chalice rather than a prized possession.