Benfica’s members will decide tomorrow who they want to be the club’s next president. Having filtered the candidates in a first round that constituted the most popular electoral event in the history of world football, the choice could now fall on the incumbent, Rui Costa, or on the man who challenges him and intends to be the 35th leader of the Eagles, João Noronha Lopes.
In addition to the empty promises that these disputes usually bring into the mix, a certain frivolity across the various competitors, a huge dose of communicational amateurism provided by the pretenders to the throne and the usual veiled attacks – the so-called orders -, what remained of the long campaign and the numbers emerged from the first round was yet another complete demonstration that Benfica is not only the biggest club in the country – being the best is another conversation for which voter turnout or Sunday selfies count little – but also the most Portuguese club in Portugal.
This inference contains within itself a mixture of pleasure and pain. Pleasure, because, supporting my intentions – I’m a Porto fan, I never hid it -, I have no doubt that the most Portuguese club in Portugal seems resigned to the mediocrity of the four years with Rui Costa at the helm. Pleasure, because, despite Luís Filipe Vieira’s cynical and belated demarcation, the leader of the eagles reminds me of José Sócrates’ vassals who never saw anything, never smelled anything, never understood anything.
Pleasure, because the sound narrative of assuming responsibility for just four football titles (the rest, allow me, is landscape), including just one championship, is nothing more than that: sand for the fans’ eyes. Pleasure, because, as is the prerogative of those who resign, the associates indicated that they preferred the predictability of more of the same to the risk of those who promised a path of rupture.
Pleasure, because, maintaining those who were not able to make an in-depth and coherent critical judgment about what they did and what they left undone, Benfica will be further away from reaching its full sporting, financial and social potential, which opens the doors to the success of my FC Porto and, I hope to a lesser extent, also of Sporting.
Attention: do not confuse anything I mentioned above with sympathy or any kind of support for João Noronha Lopes, who had the knife (the media elites) and the cheese (Rui Costa’s failure) in his hand and was unable to galvanize enough people. Throughout these months, in fact, he did the perfect job of never appearing in the eyes of Benfica fans as a solid, bold and forward-thinking alternative. Despite being better than tomorrow’s opponent, he had a great start in the campaign and, I predict, will have a strong exit from the polls.
This prediction nevertheless entails inexorable pain. Pain, because, as it is one of the most important institutions in the country and with more than 85 thousand people going to the polls, the Benfica elections are, more than one might imagine, a mirror of the meager demands that have marked the last decades in Portugal.
Pain, because shrugging our shoulders in the face of an evil that we placidly consider to be minor, has brought us successive unpleasantness: bad governance, immoral (if not amoral) leadership, organs of sovereignty taken over by vines and partisan cliques, need for lashes from external entities, depleted services, fiscal greed, scarcity of opportunities, civic disconnection, resignation or emigration of our best, destruction of our self-esteem collective and widespread hopelessness. Breaking out of this state of mind, this doldrums, is no small task – not for kids, radicals or snake oil salesmen. We will turn the page. Come January. Come the presidential elections.
Communication consultant