Opinion
In Braga, the diversionary maneuvers confirmed the worst-case scenario for Portuguese football.
In the artificial paradise where all dreams risk becoming a reality and all records risk being broken, the impossible happens or dawns with the greatest of naturalness.
You don’t even need José Mourinho’s special calculator that turns a draw into a victory. All it takes is a delusion and the work is born.
Paul Pogba, the player that Benfica’s coach left at home one fine afternoon to launch Scott McTominay to the beasts of Old Trafford, can witness like no one else the unparalleled magic of Dubai and the Globe Soccer Awards.
After a long suspension for doping, the 2018 World Champion returned to action in November wearing the Monaco shirt and this kind of celebration allowed him to win the award for “Best Return in 2025”, which means that there are no limits to the creativity of those who, year after year, are responsible for the most burlesque side of a ceremony that is now in its 16th edition.
The 26 months of punishment served by Pogba must have shaped the judges’ criteria, otherwise Portugal would almost certainly leave the Emirates with half a dozen achievements. Pedro Proença received the trophy corresponding to the best team of 2025, Cristiano Ronaldo was once again distinguished as the best footballer in the Middle East, Vitinha was considered the best midfielder in the world, while Luís Campos and Jorge Mendes gave no chance to the competition in the categories, respectively, of best sports director and best agent.
In other words, to complete the bouquet all that was left was to relegate the resurrected Pogba to an honorable second place, with Portuguese football claiming the award corresponding to the Best Return… to the past. On a Saturday that could have only been marked by individual and collective victories in Dubai, the parade of lamentations and accusations that marked the Braga-Benfica aftermath confirmed that it is naive to continue believing in a new mentality borrowed by the new generation of directors.
António Salvador and Rui Costa, in line with what had been said a few days ago by Frederico Varandas and André Villas-Boas, did not hesitate to continue devaluing the product that, irony of ironies, gives them an enviable status on the national scene, with the particularity of the leader of the Reds having made a point of speaking to journalists after the coach had challenged the structure to choose between “resignation” and protests.
Perhaps crushed by the institutional weight of Mourinho, apparently a bigger figure than any other at the Estádio da Luz, it didn’t even occur to the president that he could and should have anticipated the Setubalense if the idea was in fact to continue to recreate the worst that was recorded in the communication battles fought between the “greats” in the 90s and the new millennium.
Of course, true football fans don’t need to see their idols sitting in the press conference room making excuses for bad results and setting fire to what’s left in the devastated fields of arbitration, and it remains to be seen to what extent the industry will resist so many shots in the foot on the mined path to centralization.
With four years of his mandate ahead of him, Rui Costa would gain much more if, instead of authorizing Benfica Distrait, he exchanged fun maneuvers for the work that can still be done to make the impossible a reality.
