Sporting CP v Club Sport Marítimo
Friday December 4th, 2026
Estádio José Alvalade
Matchday 13
The warm up
As a child I was completely obsessed with football, I grew
up in a time where your television wasn't saturated with wall to wall coverage.
I'd get to watch the occasional game on a Sunday afternoon, or if I was well enough behaved that day I might be allowed to stop up and watch Match of the
Day on a Saturday night. I went to my first game at the age of 8 in 1986 and literally nothing of
note happened other than Terry Butcher kicked the ball out of the stadium which for some reason has always stuck in my mind but only because of what someone else had said about
the game, not because I'd registered it. At that time I could tell you who every player was
in my Panini sticker book and I mean literally ever single one. My mother wanted to me to be doing my spelling and
my times tables but I had no interest, I just wanted to look at my completed
pride and joy sticker book. My mother needn't have worried because I never got
a single spelling or times table question wrong as a child and got fast tracked
a year in primary school I was that far advanced. I watched my early matches
stood on a milk crate back when most grounds were predominantly terracing, those truly were different times it has to be said, it was somewhat of a right of passage.
At some point I'd decided in my head that I wanted to visit all 92 league
grounds in England. Whilst England isn't a big place that's doesn't mean
there's not some horrendously long trips involved. I've sat on minibuses and
coaches for stints as long as 7 to 9 hours just for 90 minutes of football only
to then have to repeat it going back the other way. I've a memory bank for stories
from most of the grounds I've visited even decades later. Some thing's just imprint
themselves on your kind. Then their are games that you've been to that you only
know you went because you've got the ticket and the matchday programme but even
then you're not 100% sure. I was flicking through my collection of tickets
earlier and club names were jumping out at me. Like when the fuck did I watch Dynamo
Moscow? Absolutely zero recollection. FK Partizan, who the fuck are they like? AS Roma - rings a bell going
but I couldn't tell you much more than that. AS Monaco - Really? Perhaps my
memory isn't as great as I thought it was. PSV Eindhoven - I remember their
fans because they had this amazing choreography where their fans would sway in
time with one another as this heaving mass of energy and I spent more time
watching them than I did the game. Then there's CS Marítimo and I'm reminded
that years before a friend of mine got me hooked on watching Sporting I'd seen
a Portuguese club out in the wild. Except it turns out they're not Portuguese,
they were from an island called Madeira which is based in a city called
Funchal and I only learned this decades later. That city was the birthplace of one of the most famous men on the
planet. That man once upon a time played for Sporting CP and you're reminded
how life gives you these little dots you can connect if only you choose to pay
attention. The brain likes a coincidence but humans want to call it something
else. So many people are desperate for connections with other human beings that they'll use even the most tenuous of links. Everyone must have met
that one person who gets excited over birthdates. The question comes out,
when's your birthday? Let's say it's February 2nd and by sheer coincidence
their birthday is on the 2nd too….but of October. Yet they're happy as a dog
licking its own balls because they think they're now connected to you. Clearly by
the disdain in my writing I'm not they person. Anyway's I digress.
I've already written a large degree about the history of
Club Sport Marítimo this season having played them in the Taça da Liga in what
transpired to be Rui Borges’ penultimate match as the lions mister. If you've
read either of my summers series; The Rise and Fall of Bruno de Carvalho and
the Story of Alcochete, then you'll know I've also written extensively on one
of the most infamous games in the history of Sporting CP which proved to be the
catalyst for the attacks that took place at the clubs training complex two days
after the 2-1 defeat in Funchal in the May of 2018. I imagine it must be truly bizarre for
Marítimo to be so intricately woven into the fabric of another teams recent
history but through absolutely no fault of their own. Asking Sportinguista's of
a certain age who the club played before the Alcochete attacks feels akin to
asking Americans who were alive when JFK got shot where they were. The answer
is engraved into the sides of your brain.
In the Manchester United post we discussed sliding door
moments in football, from the Superga air disaster to the one in München and
how it shaped the future of United and Torino for better and for worse. It
could be argued what happened in Funchal in the May of 2018 would ultimately
lead to the rebirth of Sporting as a football club though few could have envisaged it at
the time and it certainly didn't happen over night but you can in my opinion
call it at the very minimum a catalyst. If you've no idea what I'm talking about I'll set the
scene.
Bruno de Carvalho is then the club president and he's bet all his chips
on Jorge Jesus the former mister of Benfica and now coach of Portugal
delivering glory to the green and white half of Lisboa. Except three seasons in
it's not gone to plan. The investment in his salary stood at €17m basic before
tax, here was the man tasked with winning Sporting league titles. Instead he
delivered just one Supertaça and a Taça da Liga. There was also big player
investment on the pitch and the one salvation that season would have been
qualification for the Champions League but much like last season back in the
present day, it all went Pete Tong when they lost on the final day of the
season in Funchal to Marítimo. A win and the three points it brought with it would have put them level
with Benfica and in Portugal when two teams are tied it doesn't come down to
goal difference but their head to head record which Sporting held the advantage
in simply because they were the away team in a 1-1 draw at the Estádio da Luz.
The match at the Estádio José Alvalade finished 0-0. Think of it like away
goals counting double in the event of a draw.
The relationship between fans and the players, and Bruno de
Carvalho and the players had been deteriorating for well over a month. At the
end of the match it's claimed that the former Argentinian midfielder Marcus Acuña got involved in a verbal
confrontation with some of the travelling fans. One of the leaders of the Juve
Leo, Sporting's oldest and largest claques, went to the airport incensed and
another altercation ensues. That man was Fernando Mendes and he had a simple
message for the players and the staff when he left the airport - I'll see you
at Alcochete (the club's training base). True to his word two days later he
turned up along with the best part of 50 others, many with their faces covered, and ultimately some of the playing squad ended up physically attacked, such as in
the case of Dutch striker Bas Dost, whilst all the players were on the
receiving end of a verbal assault at the very minimum. The attack happens five
days out from the final of the Taça de Portugal which the lions maybe
unsurprisingly given the circumstances of earlier in the week, went onto lose.
So no Champions League football, no second title in the form of the Taça de
Portugal to add to the Taça da Liga they won earlier in the season, Jorge Jesus
walks out, players began rescinding their contracts and the organisations
reputation lay in tatters. If you want further details please check out both
the series mentioned above on this site.
The transition of Sporting didn't happen overnight but from
the incident in Funchal which led to the attacks at Alcochete it does become
the reason with which the clubs members vote Bruno de Carvalho out of office
and how he ends up being replaced with Frederico Varandas as club president. He
employs Hugo Viana as Sporting Director, he turns his attention to an
inexperienced coach at Sporting Braga by the name of Ruben Amorim, they pay his
release clause of €10m and the rest as they say is history. All roads lead back
to Funchal. That sliding doors moment of 90 minutes of football where had the
result gone the other way, the fans would have been jubilant come full time,
there's no altercation on the pitch at the end, nothing happens at the airport,
they qualify for the Champions League the following season and Bruno de
Carvalho remains as the club president. I expect they'd have won the Taça de
Portugal, Jorge Jesus may well have kept his job and who knows he may have
stayed and finally toppled the duopoly of Benfica and FC Porto at the top.
We'll never know.
I have to admit I didn't really realise how small Madeira is
as an island until I googled how far it was from Funchal to the airport during my research in the spring and how
easy and quick it would have been for irate fans to go there and wait for players and
staff back in 2018. The island is just 286 square miles which is approximately
double the size of the Isle of Wight. It's 35 miles long which is the
equivalent of Greater London in its entirety edge to edge. The island is home
to around 251,000 people of which 105,000 are said to live in it's captital
Funchal. Funchal’s most famous son? It is of course Cristiano Ronaldo which
makes Funchal Airport the once home of that infamous statue of the man which
looked like it had been kept next to the fire two long and melted away like a
waxwork. Now when you factor all that in, it doesn't seem like the island and their biggest football team would be somewhere for a relatively large investment in Portuguese footballing terms would be attempted to be made by a foreign company. But you'd be wrong just there. What follows is going to be quite the tale so you might want to make yourself a brew before you put your feet up and let me take you on a journey which involves a lot of criminal enterprise.
This season we've found ourselves facing a succession of football teams who are now owned by billionaire owners. So it comes as a nice change to confirm with Marítimo that they're still owned by their sócios. However it transpires they appear to have dodged a very large bullet a little over twelve months ago. When you look hard enough you'll find that Portuguese football is never dull. Actually that may be a lie, if you read the União da Serra post you'll know I ended up talking about cod fish, so I promise I will try and make up for it here for you all. I can only work with the information that I find.
Let's rewind the clock back to Mid October 2025 when the Marítimo club president Carlos André Gomes was assuring his members that he still expected to conclude a deal with the Brazilian firm Revee SA who were at that point set to invest 15 million euros to purchase a 40% stake in the Marítimo's SAD. Potentially if certain objectives were met then that figure could have risen to €22.5 million in total. Certainly it would have brought with it much needed capital at a point where the 2024/25 accounts showed they'd lost €2.3 million. By the end of the month however the deal was off. Luís Davantel who was heading the acquisition from the other side of the negotiating table couldn't guarantee the club what it was asking in terms of committments and the islanders management made the decision to pull the plug. In hindsight it now appears to be an incredible bit of foresight on their parts. Now if you are a regular reader you'll know this season quite a lot of focus in regards to those billionaire owners of Portuguese clubs we've highlighted has been their desire to build relations with Brazilian clubs owing specifically to the reduced employment laws which makes the purchase of Brazilian players easier in Portugal. A Brazilian company looking to invest in a football club based in Madeira therefore appears to be a complete reversal on that front, especially given they don't have a history of involvement in the game. The groups primary focus is given as being in the entertainment and event management industry of which their key product is the management of exhibition spaces. I doubt their ambition would be to have turned the Estádio do Marítimo into the island's premier concert venue but you never know. It feels like it would be quite a niche stopping place on any artists world tour especially given it's matchday capacity is less than 11,000 and ground staff aren't overly thrilled when concerts are held on top of all their months of hard work. Whatever the reason they wanted to invest, the group found themselves swept into a quite substantial federal money laundering and financial fraud investigation in Brazil owing to the groups ties to two companies - Reag Investimentos and Banco Master.
Now if you choose to put two and two together with what follows and make it four that's your perogative. You'll see what I mean the further you read on. For the sake of not getting myself sued whatever you might be thinking is coincidenal. You're not a horse I'm trying to lead to drink.
Now Reag were said to have a controlling interest in Reeve and it was they who became a central target in Operação Carbono Oculto which apparently means Operation Hidden Carbon and doesn't sound merely as compelling in English. This was being headed up by Brazil’s Federal Police who allege that the group had managed investment funds which were used to conceal billions of reais (Brazil's official currency) in illicit proceeds for the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). And who are the PCC? Well they're described as Brazil's biggest criminal organisation often referred to as the "trade union of crime." Be honest you didn't have this on your matchday preview bingo card today did you?
The PCC basically begins life as a group of prisoners who grab a stranglehold on the lawless Brazilian prison population. Basic strategy is to provide protection to inmates and their methodology is to punish those who commit crimes such as rapes and murders. In return for their protection members would pay a monthly fee. In the 1990s and 2000s it's members have progressed to activities outside of prison walls and are carrying out bank raids including the countries largest ever heist which took place at the central Banco Banespa branch in São Paulo in which they stole R$32.5 million.
Their leader goes by the name of Marcola, also known as Playboy who happens to be serving a 232 year sentence. Under his stewardship the group murdered Judge Antônio José Machado Dias who ran what was then Brazil's strictest supermax-style prison. In 2006 the PCC carries out attacks which led to 564 deaths. Maybe no surprise that they're up to their noses in cocaine as well. Don't excuse that pun it was fully intentional. Where was that cocaine headed? Well, for the large part into Europe. Madeira has a cargo port in Caniçal...just saying. Fast forward to the present day and the PCC has fingers in so many pies it's untrue. At some point when you make so much money through all your criminal enterprises you have to launder it. Now here's where it gets even more interesting because the PCC are accused of having invested money into... Liga 3 teams in Portugal with the sole purpose of washing their money.
In the November of 2024, the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) announced an investigation into allegations of money laundering involving the PCC. This stemmed from claims made by the Portuguese newspaper Público that the PCC were exploiting lower league football clubs in Portugal to launder illicit profits from drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises. It would seem those claims were importantly proven to be substantiated.
Throughout 2023 Ulises de Souza Jorge, a Brazilian football agent connected to the PCC approached three Portuguese clubs with the promise of a financial offer; Varzim, Felgueiras and Vilaverdense. It should be noted he is, or was, the agent of Real Madrid's Éder Militão. With Varzim, they signed a memorandum of understanding in the August of 2023 which promised the struggling financial club €650,000 upfront and a further €4.5 million in long term investments. For a Liga 3 side that should have felt too good to be true. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and those who identify as non-binary, what do we say if something feels to good to be true? Yes, well done - it usually is. €400,000 did arrive initially through bit part payments which came from...suspicious sources. Then €250,000 in cash turns up - apparently a violation of Portuguese law that one. Can you think why? The end result is that Varzim's board resigns. Attempted deals at the other two clubs would fall through. Together with the Brazilian Christiano Lino de Menezes, Jorge made a proposal to Vilaverdense of €2m and €2.5m to Felgueiras though neither deal came to fruition having been rejected. According to the Portuguese paper the Observador, the pair ended up working with AD Fafe. That term there ‘working with’ may well have been demanded by the newspapers which is purely conjecture on my part because other reports suggest the pair have invested in the club.*
Fafe is a town in the Braga district home to approximately 7,000 inhabitants. The football club like those previously mentioned were plying their trade in Liga 3. I'm always highlighting how few people there are who attend football matches in Portugal outside of Os Três Grandes. Now ironically their average attendance which currently stands at 2,200 at the time of writing would put them quite high in on the table for average attendances in Portugal as an entirety which it in itself is madness. It's higher than some of the teams in the Portuguese top flight. But if we park that quirk to one side for the outlier that it is and look at the financial figures bandied about in connection with the other three clubs, they are truly vast. These are tiny football clubs especially in the case of AD Fafe. No investment figures were given specifically here and that one would assume is because any deal that is in place is subject to ongoing legal investigations. What we do know is fraud experts reasons why clubs of this size and stature become ripe for these types of investments; Their income is traditionally so low that banks wouldn't invest their resources into investigating them and in turn the clubs themselves don't have the resources that the banks do to be able to investigate and legitimise the source of funding themselves. This is why someone potentially has been able to slip into a Portuguese Liga 3 side under the radar initially. This isn't an issue in Portugal with the PCC by the way, their are similar accusations and investigations into Corinthians who play in the Brazilian top flight. They're a massive fucking club as well and I don't just mean by comparative standards to the clubs mentioned here in Portugal, though that difference is night end day. Corinthians are giants in terms of the entire footballing landscape and play in a stadium with a capacity of just north of 48,000 and are managed by Clarence Seedorf. I've written about corruption before in football and this won't be the last time I'm sure.
To re-ierate the point though made initially before I took you down this rabbit hole, it wasn't Revee who was being accused of funnelling illicit funds it was their associated companies Reag Investimentos and Banco Master with their links to PCC. But let's make this clear, Reeve was a spin off company from Reag and both companies were founded and chaired by Brazilian financier João Carlos Mansur. So if you're walking away thinking - I wonder if PCC were using Reeve SA as a front for money laundering by buying a percentage of CS Marítimo, one I didn't say that at any point and two, if you think it, don't repeat it in a public space because there is zero evidence of that. I just can't control how your mind works.
Fixtures played since the two clubs met last
Matchday 10 - Santa Clara (H) 0-2 L
9 minutes into the match the home side were fortunate to see Ribeiro's 19 yard effort clang off the crossbar and away to safety. The visitors went ahead on 35 with a good advert as to why zonal marking doesn't work when Ribeiro nipped in at the edge of the six yard box to guide home a low cross from the left and make it 1-0. Just before the hour mark the home side then gave an equally great advert for the dangers of holding a high defensive line as a simple ball over the top into space allowed Vinícius to burst free from ten yards inside his opponents half and end his run with a neat finish into the bottom right hand corner from 20 yards to make it 2-0. Despite Moreira's best attempts to score into his own net on 69 minutes which needed the quick thinking of Neneca in goal to spare his blushes, the home side unable to find a reply.
xG 2.10 to 0.77
Total Attempts 17 - 11
Shots on target 6 - 5
Big Chances 4 - 2
Big Chances Missed 4 - 0
Matchday 11 - Estoril (A) PP
The match had to be postponed following bad weather on Madeira which prevented the away side flying to the Portuguese mainland.
In the markets
Marítimo TBC
Draw TBC
Sporting CP TBC
*Since the initial post when live subsequent information pertaining to the links between the supposed investment in AD Fafe and Ulisses Jorge has come to light. To clarify despite what you might read elsewhere online the club is 75% owned by a holding company called Felmargest, SGPS, S.A. alongside another holding company Rómulo, SGPS, S.A. Negotiations did take place however those failed at the initial stage. Those negotitaions were to purchase their entire 75% stake in the Liga 3 side. We're happy to correct any insinuations made above.
