Your First Season of Portuguese Football: A Newcomer’s Guide to Clubs, Derbies and Match Days

Your First Season of Portuguese Football: A Newcomer’s Guide to Clubs, Derbies and Match Days

Within a week of arriving, someone will ask which club you support. Here is how to answer, and what to do on match day.

If you move to Portugal, somebody will ask you which club you support within your first week. It might be the barber, or the man next to you at the café counter while the evening match plays on a television fixed high in the corner. “None yet” is an acceptable answer for about a month. After that, people start choosing for you.

This is the guide I give friends who arrive for a new season: who the clubs are, which games matter, how a match day works, and how to follow it all without much Portuguese.

Three giants, and everyone else

Portuguese football has been run by three clubs for almost a century. People call them os três grandes, the big three. Benfica and Sporting are both from Lisbon. FC Porto is the club of the north. Between them they have won almost every league title ever played. Only two other clubs have taken the championship: Belenenses in 1946 and Boavista in 2001.

All three play in grounds rebuilt for Euro 2004, which Portugal hosted and, painfully, lost in the final to Greece. Benfica play at the Estádio da Luz, Sporting at the Estádio José Alvalade, and Porto at the Estádio do Dragão.

Allegiance is usually inherited. Plenty of Portuguese children are registered as club members before they can walk, and families split along club lines the way other countries split along politics. If you have Portuguese in-laws, find out their club before you buy a scarf.

The big three are not the whole story. SC Braga has spent the last two decades as a genuine fourth force, and Vitória de Guimarães has one of the loudest home crowds in the country. The top division, the Liga Portugal, has 18 clubs playing 34 rounds between August and May.

The games that stop the country

A few fixtures matter more than the rest, and you will feel them in the streets the week before.

O Clássico

Benfica against Porto. It is Lisbon against the north, capital against second city, and it carries every old grievance between the two.

The Lisbon derby

Benfica against Sporting, two clubs whose stadiums sit a few kilometres apart. Workplaces, families and friendships in Lisbon take sides for it.

The Minho derby

Braga against Guimarães. It is smaller on television and every bit as intense in person.

If you only go to one big game in your first season, make it one of these. If you can’t get a ticket, watching one in a busy café is the next best thing, and arguably more educational.

How match day actually works

Tickets

Buy tickets from the club’s official website or ticket office, not from resellers outside the ground. For the biggest games, club members (sócios) usually get first access, and general sale can sell out within hours. Smaller clubs are a different world: cheap tickets, short queues and a much better view.

Kick-off times

League fixtures are dated well in advance, but the exact day and time are often confirmed only a few weeks ahead, because broadcasters choose their slots. Evening kick-offs at 20:30 or later are normal. Don’t book a dinner on a derby weekend until the time is official.

Colours

Benfica wear red, Sporting green and white, Porto blue and white. Do not wear a rival’s colours in the home sections. The organised supporter groups, the claques, take this seriously, and so does the stadium security.

Food and drink

Outside the ground you will find vans selling bifanas, thin pork steaks in a bread roll, and plenty of people cracking sunflower seeds through the first half. If you want a small draught beer, ask for uma imperial in Lisbon and um fino in Porto. Getting this wrong is forgiven. Getting it right earns a nod.

Ten words that will carry you through

You can enjoy a match with no Portuguese at all, but a few words make the café conversation much easier:

• golo: goal

• adepto: supporter

• árbitro: referee (you will hear this one shouted)

• fora de jogo: offside

• penálti: penalty

• cartão amarelo / vermelho: yellow / red card

• empate: draw

• jornada: matchday, or round

• claque: organised supporters’ group

• Vamos!: Come on!

Watching when you can’t be there

Most Portuguese football is watched in cafés, not stadiums. Almost every neighbourhood café has a television, and on a big night the owner will turn it up and drag the chairs round to face it. Arrive early for a derby, order something, and you have a seat for ninety minutes.

The one thing that confuses newcomers is that matches are split between different broadcasters, and some clubs show their own home games on their own channel. So the café down the road might have one match and not the next. Check before you leave the house; I post who is showing what each week on my site. If you would rather follow the season from the sofa, sort out Portuguese TV at home before the derbies come round.

A plan for your first season

If you want to go from outsider to someone with opinions by May, this is the order I’d do it in:

1. Watch a big-three game in a packed café in your first month. Pay attention to who cheers.

2. Go to a small club’s home match. It’s cheap, friendly and close to the pitch.

3. Get a ticket for one of the derbies, even if it means joining a waiting list.

4. Learn the ten words above and use them, badly, at the café counter.

5. Pick a club, and be ready to explain why.

The last step is the hardest, so take your time. In Portugal it is the one decision nobody lets you change.