Tiago Silva: “There’s a narrative to brand Porto as cheats” | OneFootball

Tiago Silva was categorical in dismantling what he describes as an organized narrative against FC Porto, rejecting the idea of a conspiracy but denouncing something he considers even more pernicious: the deliberate construction of a story to label the club as engaging in “cheating, unsporting practices and even criminal acts.”

The CMTV commentator explained the mechanism: “They start with one fact, invent others, and then ride the wave.” He traced the origin of this narrative to the incident involving the footage shown during the FC Porto-Braga match, refereed by Veríssimo.

Tiago Silva detailed the chronology of events: at half-time of that match, footage of FC Porto’s disallowed goal was shown on a loop in the dressing room. “Then they invented a fact — that during half-time footage had also been shown of another incident, from a youth match, where the same referee had failed to disallow a goal,” he explained. However, the commentator stressed that this “turned out to be false”: the footage from the youth match was indeed shown, “but only at the end of the match, 45 minutes after the final whistle.”

The commentator also recalled that the referee himself, at half-time, did not call over any delegate and did not attach any importance to what had happened, considering it “possibly a technical problem.” Veríssimo only appears to have understood the intention when he saw the footage from the youth match — already at the end of the game — and filed a complaint on the grounds that there had been an attempt at coercion. “At the end of the match, not at half-time,” Tiago Silva stressed.

To highlight what he sees as a double standard, the commentator drew a comparison he considers revealing: “The same Sporting whose president, in 2019, during a Portimonense-Sporting match, went down the tunnel at half-time to confront referee João Pinheiro over Bolasie’s sending-off. So apparently that was no longer reprehensible.”

Tiago Silva then moved on to the more recent episode: during FC Porto-Sporting, television cameras caught an FC Porto ball girl holding onto a ball that was meant to be put back into play — something the commentator himself acknowledged as “an ugly thing.”

This context is linked to the case that dominated the week: before the handball match between FC Porto and Sporting at the Dragão Arena, coach Ricardo Costa and pivot Christian Moga had to receive medical assistance from INEM after claiming they had detected an “intense smell” in the away dressing room. FC Porto denied the accusations in an “absolute, clear and unequivocal” manner, describing them as “serious, abusive and completely baseless,” and contacted the Handball Federation and the PSP for an immediate inspection of the venue’s conditions.

In Tiago Silva’s view, all these episodes are part of the same strategy: to build a public narrative that sticks FC Porto with the image of a club that resorts to illicit practices to win — regardless of the facts.

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