That Time Boavista Conquered Portuguese Football
Normally, there are big football clubs that are usually crowned champions in their leagues and are the ones that accumulate a large part of the titles in that country, forming a rich history over the years. The trophies have a domino effect since they attract more fans, which makes the club have more income that should be invested in the development and improvement of the institution and this would lead to more trophies for the showcases.There are clubs that grow in such a way that they become dominant in their country to the point of sharing the majority of their country's trophies among themselves, as happens for example in Scotland with Celtic and Rangers, in Germany with Bayern Munich or in the Netherlands with Ajax and PSV. In Portugal, this situation reaches an almost exaggerated point since FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting Clube have won 87 of the 89 leagues played to date. One of the other two leagues, though, was Boavista's 2000-01 league trophy.
About Boavista FC
The Boavista Futebol Clube, founded in 1903, was navigating from its birth between the different divisions of the Portuguese football structure until in the 70s when they managed to establish themselves in the first tier. In 1997, José Eduardo de Loureiro took charge of the club, taking over from his father who helped establish Boavista in the first level. Loureiro appointed the then young manager Jaime Pacheco as the club's coach.The manager Jaime Pacheco
Jaime Pachecho as a player stood out at FC Porto, Boavista's city rival, and became captain of the Portugal national team while as a manager he was taking his first steps in clubs such as Paços Ferreira (where he was player-coach), Rio Ave (also as a player-coach), Uniao Lamas or Vitoria Guimaraes for short spells. Pacheco took over a club that had lost some of its main figures such as Erwin Sánchez, who had gone to Benfica or Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink who had been signed by Leeds United.Pacheco had been polishing his management style by focusing on motivational and disciplinary aspects that made his teams very solid and difficult to beat. The coach wanted his teams to act as a unit, which added greater value to players with less talent but who could fulfill the particular role required of them for the benefit of the team.
In the 1998-99 season, with the return of Erwin "Platini" Sánchez to the club, Pacheco guided Boavista to a historic second place, only behind their rivals, Porto, something that made them qualify for the UEFA Champions League for the first time. The following season, Boavista would have another good performance, although in this case it finished fourth behind the country's big three. In this way, the Chessados were consolidating themselves as a competitive club although the vast majority did not expect what would happen a year later.
The 2000-01 season
Pacheco had been at Boavista for three years now and the team had already assimilated his ideas and playing style, expressing it in a great way in each game. The Bessa Stadium became an impregnable fort since, except for the match against Braga, Boavista won all the league games they played at home, keeping a record undefeated for 12 of the 17 games in their stadium. That, coupled with important away draws against the two greats from Lisbon, were enough to lift the title.With the penultimate round of the arriving, Boavista received Desportivo Aves with a 4-point advantage over FC Porto, which meant that if they won their match, the club would be champions. Funny enough, the last day was a Porto derby that could have reached an unprecedented intensity in Portugal since it would have decided the fate of the competition. Fortunately for Boavista, they beat Aves 3-0 and with that they wrote a name as the second club to win the tournament that was not from the Big Three.
Boavista finished the season with only 22 goals conceded (considering that they received 4 on the last day where they were already champions), obviously being the team with the fewest amount received and the second with the most goals scored (63), only behind Porto (73). Those goals were distributed among the majority of the team's players, demonstrating that Boavista's strength was playing as a unit.
That champion Boavista team had some names that were already known, such as the Bolivian Sánchez, but they also had others that would be better known in the future thanks, among other things, to their spell in this period. Among them we highlight Petit, a midfielder who arrived that same season from Gil Vicente and who would later have a long spell at Benfica and the Portugal national team.
There was also Ricardo, the goalkeeper who would later play for Sporting Clube and Betis and who is also known for having spent many years defending Portugal's goal. Another standout was Pedro Emanuel, who would later be an important part of Mourinho's Porto team that won the UEFA Cup and the UEFA Champions League consecutively.
The fall of Boavista
Despite the success achieved in the Primeira Liga and participating in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Cup (even reaching a semi-final) and having managed to retain most of its main figures for one or two years after the league success, Boavista began to suffer financial problems as a result of the construction of the new stadium for the Euro 2004 which, in the first instance, was agreed to be financed between the club and the Portuguese Football Federation, something that ultimately did not happen.The debacle, like the promotion, was progressive and in 2004 the decision was made to fire Jaime Pacheco and replace him with "Platini" Sánchez who was also unable to right the course. Finally, in 2008, the team was relegated to the second tier of Portugal for being involved in the Apito Dourado case, for intimidation of referees. After several twists and turns, in 2014, the club returned to the Primeira Liga and has remained there, although without repeating the great seasons of the Jaime Pacheco era.
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