These days, every time a new set of data published by the Central Authorities of Europe, Portugal, close your eyes and blushed. The economy collapses, we can ask the charity, and fear of the austerity measures the government is obliged to follow.
In an area of national interest, but things could not be better. Portuguese Superliga is in the high growth rate of national competitions in European football at the moment.
At least according to something called UEFA coefficients, a scoring system which decides when the national leagues in the hierarchy of European football. The first five are well established - England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France - but in nine months, the performance of the Portuguese club to the European League, whose finals will be played tomorrow in Dublin between Porto and Sporting Braga, obtained more points than any other country in the ranking.
Porto has long been stubbornly opposed to the economic law that says that in Europe's elite club karate competitions to keep the richest states. They won the Champions League in 2004, and the command of a novice coach, Andre Villas-Boas, have dominated the Super League season - wrap the title without losing a single match.
Their progress in Dublin has also been impressive. It took them as far away as Moscow, Sofia and Istanbul. It included victories over the Spanish team like Sevilla and Villarreal.
Villas-Boas is only 33. He is young enough to play, except that there was never much of a footballer, so devoted to the theory of youth sports. He entered professional football after being hired the former Porto coach, Bobby Robson, in conversation and offered to help with administrative tasks. It was in his teens at the time. At age 20, was at work in the services of another young and ambitious Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho.
Villas-Boas has not acquired a reputation for Mourinho grumpy defensive tactics. In this he was certainly helped by the Porto striker as prolific as the Hulk Falcão Brazilian and Colombian Radamel.
Porto is soaring favorites, Braga provincial outsiders. But Braga have a canniness about them. They surprised Benfica, the Portuguese team third in the last four of Europe in the semifinals of the league.
Braga hope their first appearance in a major international tour will drive them to the league's elite.
So here we are at the end of the 2010-2011 season for all league games and tournaments are coming to an end and it will be interesting to see how two European finals this year, the walks, with FC Porto and Sporting Braga to take the head to-head in what will be a case of port 'and will be a special night in Dublin as the UEFA Europa League will be held in Ireland. Spain will host the European finals after a long period of time. You can tune in here for live action and match highlights avilable here shortly after the game.
FC Porto are final on the back of the defeat of the big teams with the likes of Villarreal, Spartak Moscow and CSKA Moscow, and they had to dig deep into all tie and wins a few, it was difficult, but worth the work . On the other hand, we whave Sporting Braga, who just sneaked into the final by beating Dynamo Kyiev. Although they have defeated Liverpool in the quarterfinals, but otherwise they had to dig deep or facing a difficult competition. Benfica beat Sporting Braga Semfinal got berths in the UEFA Europa League final.
