Lessons in democracy from FC Porto

Things started with a fight and hardly got better from there. Over the past approximately five months, there have been several arrests; drug trafficking and money laundering allegations; Deep whispers of illegal data breaches; vague allegations of bullying; And a number of incriminating allegations regarding financial irregularities, dishonesty and betrayal were made.

This year, elections will be held in at least 64 countries across the world. The European Union will do the same. The campaigns will be fierce. Often, they can be toxic. However, few will prove poisonous enough – or offer such an instructive case study of the state of democracy in 2024 – to decide who becomes president of FC Porto.

Like dozens of clubs across Europe, Porto – one of the three great houses of Portuguese football – is owned by its members. Their numbers currently stand at about north of 140,000. Every few years, the club holds elections for both the President and the Executive Board, to determine who should run the club on their behalf.

Generally, these are little more than paperwork. Only a certain percentage of members vote. When there is a choice the choice is usually between two essentially indistinguishable old people. Until the last round of elections, in 2020, Porto was a democracy only in the nominal sense.

Since 1982, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa has served as President of Porto. In that time, he led the team to being crowned champions of Europe twice – 1987 and 2004, trivia fans – and establishing it as Portugal’s dominant force. Porto have won 23 Portuguese titles under Pinto da Costa, nine more than their nearest rival at the time, Benfica.

There was generally less appetite for change then. Often, club elections were such that they could attract a powerful figure from the former Soviet bloc. Pinto da Costa was re-elected largely unopposed, the votes little more than a tick-box exercise, a parade of bureaucracy, with all the excitement involved.

This year has been quite different. About 35,000 members are expected to vote on Saturday, much more than usual. They will be asked to choose one of three presidential candidates on the ballot.

Pinto da Costa, now 82, and Nuno Lobo, a 54-year-old businessman and defeated challenger in 2020. However, the one attracting more attention is Andre Villas-Boas, who is still boyish at the age of 46, not only the revered young newcomer who coached Chelsea and Tottenham, but also the manager who in 2011 Took Porto to the treble. He was appointed under the auspices of Pinto da Costa at the age of only 31.

Villas-Boas announced his candidacy – as a lifelong member, he said, it was always his dream to become club president – ​​at a gala presentation in November attended by former Porto players.

He then tried to have diplomatic talks with the man who had given him the opportunity. The message was – partly through political expediency – that, with gratitude to Pinto da Costa, it was time for change. (Villas-Boas was less kind to the manager under whom he made his name: in a rousing montage of Porto’s greatest wins, Jose Mourinho’s absence was conspicuous.)

However, by challenging a powerful incumbent, it became more difficult for Villas-Boas to maintain that particular line. At the club’s general assembly in November, members of Porto’s largest ultra faction, the Super Dragos, were reported to have attacked those who spoke against the club’s leadership. A dozen people were later arrested, among them the group’s leader Fernando Madureira. A subsequent police raid at his home found drugs, weapons and several thousand euros in cash. (Madureira is still in prison awaiting trial.)

This created the atmosphere. All three candidates have spent the last few months visiting various places in the city, visiting fan groups and campaigning for votes, as any self-respecting presidential candidate does. The rhetoric has increased rapidly. “Almost every day, it feels like laundry, washing dirty clothes,” Lobo said.

Pinto da Costa, clearly hurt by what he sees as a betrayal by a former pupil, at one point compared Villas-Boas to his dog. He has accused Villas-Boas of surrounding himself with “enemies of FC Porto”, hinting that he is merely a puppet for others. They have highlighted Villas-Boas’s upper-middle-class lineage, portrayed him as an elitist figure, and suggested that his campaign illegally obtained the phone numbers of voting members.

Villas-Boas, on the other hand, has been unconcerned about Pinto da Costa’s mismanagement of the club. Porto’s latest financial figures showed debts and liabilities of more than $700 million, evidence of what he called its “dysfunctional structure”. He has stated that the club is essentially in “operational bankruptcy”.

He claims that Pinto da Costa has allowed Porto, once a model of how clubs navigate the transfer market, to be used as a “negotiation warehouse”, essentially placing control of its transfer strategy in the hands of a handful. Preferred agents have been assigned. “The authority of the club has been destroyed in favor of the interests of a few arbitrators,” Villas-Boas said.

He has asked for guarantees on the transparency of the elections, and described the November violence – which led to accusations that the militants were protecting the club’s profitable relationship with the current leaders – as “the darkest days in the history of Porto”. Said to be one of. Villas-Boas says all this proves the urgent need for reform.

How the elections will play out on Saturday is unclear: the anticipated record turnout bodes well for Villas-Boas, but then again football teams are naturally conservative places, wary of drastic change and quick to appreciate the comfort of the familiar. . Porto has been Pinto da Costa’s fiefdom for four decades; Fans and members may find it difficult to imagine a world in which this is not the case.

What’s more obvious, and more depressing, is that it’s not particularly hard to draw a line between all this – the allegations and accusations, the easy-access conspiracies, the sharp threat of actual violence – and what might instead happen over the next few months. In the big election phase. It appears that this is how democracy will work in 2024, whether the future of a club or a country is at stake.

big step, big shoes

It’s hard to argue that Arne Slott doesn’t deserve his chance. In his three seasons at Feyenoord, he led the club to only its second championship of the century, won a Dutch Cup, and led the team to its first European final since 2002. And they’ve done all this with a team with a much higher budget than their domestic rivals.

It is no surprise that he has emerged as the front-runner to replace Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool. (At the time of writing, the coach and club were discussing compensation; it seems likely that momentum will end with the appointment.)

Liverpool promised a forensic, data-driven approach to finding Klopp’s replacement. The slot ticks most of the boxes. Liverpool are perhaps gambling that the biggest flaw on his CV – the experience of handling the caliber of player they will get at Anfield – is due to a lack of opportunity rather than ability.

However, Slott’s biggest challenge won’t be the team. These will be fans. It seems that many feel that this slot is not an overwhelming option, but rather it depends on the man who will be tasked with replacing him: Klopp, who in his nine years at Liverpool has not only made almost Every trophy has been won. , but also established a strong bond with the crowd and much of the city.

If hired and given time, Slott may be able to repeat this, and perhaps even surpass it. But time is unlikely to be available in abundance. The bigger challenge for the slot – as it would be for whoever replaces Klopp – comes when Liverpool, a few months into next season, find themselves eighth in the Premier League, having already struggled to keep pace. doing. Slots are a logical, rational choice. This test is emotional after Klopp.

There was no doubt that Chelsea’s victory in the first leg of the Women’s Champions League semi-final against Barcelona last week was a surprise: Barcelona Femeni, after all, had not lost at all in a year, had already not lost at home pandemic and was the strong favorite to be crowned European champion once again.

Still, the idea of ​​Emma Hayes’s Chelsea team as Mighty Ducks-style underdogs doesn’t exactly fit with reality. After all, Chelsea have broken the world transfer record at least twice, employ several of the highest-paid female players in the world, and have won each of the last four editions of the Women’s Super League, the richest women’s tournament in Europe. Has attained.

Of course, the pressure is on Barcelona to overcome a one-goal deficit and reach a fifth Champions League final in six years when the teams meet in the return leg in London on Saturday. But Chelsea also has some expectations. The fact that it has yet to win a European title is an omission on Hayes’ otherwise spotless CV. She certainly wouldn’t want to leave England without rectifying that situation.