THE DEATH OF BOAVISTA – A FOOTBALL OBITUARY FROM GLASGOW WITH CONDOLENCES…
I heard the news about Boavista’s liquidation the way you hear about a great aunt dying, not exactly surprising, but it still packs a punch.
One of the old ones. One of the real ones. Not in restructuring, not in administration, not being handled by a holding company with the dexterity of a card sharp hiding an ace up his sleeve, no engine room subsidiaries, and no basket of assets sold apparently including “ra deed’s, the club’s history, records, and trophies.
No. Boavista. Are. Dead.
Not the polite Scottish version of death, with paperwork and a cosy PR narrative. I mean the Portuguese version, vultures circling the stadium, lights turned off, the smell of debt wafting through the streets of Porto like the aftermath of a binman strike. Death the old-fashioned way. Ashes. Gone. Nothing left but memories and heartbreak.
And the second the shock wore off, some tiny, wicked worm in the back of my brain laughed, well, Ibrox fans, imagine if your club hadn’t had half the establishment practising CPR on the corpse.
Because Boavista? They didn’t get the Scottish Treatment™. No emergency summit. No panicked suits murmuring about “the integrity of the league.” No moral gymnastics performed by men who wear oversized masonic rings and still call each other “Brother” in company emails.
Portugal took one look at Boavista’s financial guts, shrugged, and said – “Yep. That’s dead. Next.”
Meanwhile, Scotland in 2012 behaved like a televangelist trying to resurrect a wallet full of IOUs. The original Rangers keeled over like a sacred cow in a field full of unpaid tax bills, and instead of letting nature take its course, Scottish football reacted like someone had switched off life support for their favourite uncle, and a hospital administrator suggested all might be well if they just plugged it back in.
Suddenly everyone became a metaphysicist. “What is a club?” they asked, stroking their chins. “What is identity? What is continuity? What is liquidation really?”
Never had so many people deployed so much philosophical creativity to avoid saying the obvious. “Your club’s deid mate, beat it”.
But no, the resurrection plan was already in motion. The ghost was pushed back into the corpse with a set of new company documents and a fresh coat of legal paint, and hey presto! Up popped a reanimated beast demanding its history, trophies and sense of eternal superiority as if nothing had happened.
Boavista’s ghost won’t get that. Their ghost will wander Porto at 3am, clattering around empty bars and mumbling about its 2001 title win, and the UEFA Cup run that should’ve been theirs. Their fans will have to build a phoenix from the ground up with bloodied hands, not with Scottish football’s establishment whispering secret passwords and sliding rulebooks with highlighted passages under the table.
Celtic fans remember Boavista. The snarling semi-final. The clenched fists. Larsson breaking through like a goddamn Norse legend to send the Celts to Seville. Boavista were real opponents, the kind that made your stomach knot. That team deserved better than this scorched-earth ending.
Instead, they die properly. Rangers didn’t. Rangers died like a mafia accountant, quietly, diplomatically, surrounded by men who insisted nobody had seen anything.
And this is the tragedy, not just the death itself, but the absence of theatre. Boavista deserved to rage, to scream, to tear the sky open. Instead, they were ushered offstage with a muttered apology and the sound of paperwork being stamped by cold Portuguese hands.
If Boavista somehow rise again, FC Boavista 1903, The Boavista, it will be earned through sweat and suffering. There will be no emergency handrails to grab. No league bosses whispering about “Armageddon.” No mysterious lawyers performing metaphysical CPR.
theRangers, thanks to the magic of boardroom séances, dodgy business necromancy and the sort of legal contortions that make chiropractors wince, came ‘back’ like Trigger’s broom or Frankenstein’s monster, sewn together, missing a few bolts, but insisting loudly that it was the same creature all along.
Boavista fans now stare into the abyss and wonder why they weren’t allowed that same luxury.
But deep down, they know the truth, Scotland bent its rules for one corpse and one corpse only and Portugal doesn’t do séances.
Boavista are dead. Rangers died too — until a brotherhood of nervous men decided they couldn’t afford the ghost.
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The report is almost correct regarding the club withdrawing from the league … what happened was that the club (similar to the lisbon club Belenenses a few years ago) spllt into 2 … one run by the SAD (Sort of PLC) and the other by the Club . The SAD version are still playing in the Porto district league whereas the Club decided to start up a new club and due to the PLC issues were unable to contract players and field a team. The first few matches were delayed as a agreement with the Porto FA and both the two clubs … the problem happened when they were due to play the new club Panteras Negras who refused the appeal to delay the match. The curious thing here is that Panteras Negras are a team formed by the BOAVISTA FANS. Therefore Boavista FC were docked 3 points … this opened a precedent which the following opponent also took and therefore the Porto FA were finally forced to call a halt. Boavista FC decided to abandon and criticised the SAD for the situation … the SAD then criticised the Boavista FC for starting in the first place as they knew the situation. Fun and games in Portuguese football
A band of ‘brothers’ indeed. Peter Lawwell being one of the most prominent. Celtic historians of the future will not forget this quisling’s behaviour since the Huns died.
Hail Hail.
“Rangers died like a mafia accountant, quietly, diplomatically, surrounded by men who insisted nobody had seen anything.”
Lol, excellent.