Salgueiros vs Cannes 1991: Zidane debuts as Salgueiros fairytale becomes reality | OneFootball

Zinedine Zidane played his European debut in Portugal. That could be the perfect start for any football story. Only, for once, the French genius is not the main character in this tale. In fact, his debut on the continental arena – one he would dominate – pales in comparison with the other big story of that night of September 1991.

Fifteen months before Sport Comércio and Salgueiros played in the Portuguese second tier. Seven years prior they still hosted sides on a dirt pitch, having been the last club to ever play in a Portuguese first division stadium without a grass turf. They were as small as you could get, despite their brilliant history as a resistance club ever since the 1920s, and here they were, debuting in the UEFA Cup against all the odds.

Could it get any better than that? What about winning your first-ever European match how does that look like? For the Alma Salgueirista it was pure heaven.

The Salgueiros “soul”

It’s Thursday night on 19 September. It’s chilly as any late days at the end of Porto’s summer usually are. More than six thousand supporters flock around, patiently making their way to the ground. They have been waiting for this moment for so long that no one seems to be in a hurry. Sadly they are also quite a way from home. The Vidal Pinheiro stadium is long gone now. Sold by the club to the city so it would pave the way for construction works for the Porto metro line 4, it was turned into more concrete and a station that bears its name, a distant memory of what was and never will be again.

Those days were still distant however on that September night. The small ground at Paranhos, surrounded by tall residential buildings that provided an extra audience, had been deemed unworthy of hosting European football by the almighty UEFA bureaucrats, preventing the fans from proceeding with their usual ritual of drinking some beers and eating the usual bifanas on the couple of bars around the corner in what was then, as it had been before and ever since, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city. A working-class setting, full of outcasts, immigrants and people who knew how hard life was.

That toughness had impregnated the local side soul. And soul was the club’s motto since forever, sung out by local women and men who didn’t want to support the much-fancied FC Porto – who played only a couple of blocks southeast of Paranhos – preferring to stick with their local roots. Alma Salgueirista (Salgueiros Soul) was not just used as a sign name by the ultras group. It was what Salgueiros was all about. And despite having to play a few miles west, at their local rivals Boavista’s Bessa stadium, supporters took their soul with them for a night to remember.

“Rebel club” is founded

Salgueiros was one of the small sides that developed in Porto at the turn of the 1910s, a time when football became extremely popular in town, following the success of Boavista, Académico and FC Porto. Legend says the club was founded below a streetlamp where the local lads usually met to kick a ball around after their work in the local factories or in the farming fields was done. They had just seen Benfica play Porto and were enthralled with the red and white of the Lisbon side, adopting it as their club colours as well as the eagle they had in their crest. It was a club started by teenagers that always managed to keep that rebel spirit well alive.

The teamsheet and match facts from Salgueiros’ one and only home match in UEFA competition

They were also extremely poor. People usually met on the street, below lamps, because there was no electricity, they lived in shanties built on what was called ilhas, and spent the least amount of time possible indoors. Life was shared communally outside and that identity was what allowed the club to eventually prosper, even if they were on the brink of disappearing altogether. With the help of locals such as the famed captain Vidal Pinheiro – who offered a stretch of land he had on the outskirts of the neighbourhood – they were able to build with their own hands a wooden ground that they desperately needed after being kicked out of the Covelo pitch, much because of some public pressure by FC Porto who were not happy with the popularity gained by Salgueiros during the 1920s in the north side of town.

Paying for political resistance

The lack of resources and the model chosen for the first years of the football league, with only two sides from Porto taking part in the competition, delayed Salgueiros’ debut in the elite up to 1943. They also paid a price for their public support of the General Norton de Matos, the first officer to defy Oliveira Salazar by running for the presidency in 1948. Afraid of the regime, all the football clubs in the northern areas shut down their doors to Matos, who wanted to stage a political rally in support of his cause. Salgueiros opened the doors of the Vidal Pinheiro in what was the greatest-ever public act of defiance against the dictatorship up to that moment.

With the elections rigged, Matos was forced to flee after the results were announced and Salgueiros was forever seen as a dangerous republican and popular institution. It took them another ten years to win the second-tier league for the first time and return to the first division. It was a short-lived stint, followed by another in the early 1960s. After that, another economic crisis and the club plunged almost into oblivion as Porto and Boavista enjoyed their golden hour during the 1970s and 1980s.

No grass pitch but a place at the top table

In the early eighties Salgueiros went up once again and so, in 1984, they became the last football club to play in the elite with a ground that had no grass. Another drop followed and in 1990 the Salgueristas enjoyed another second-tier league title. Most expected the stint to be, once again, short. They would be playing first-division football for the following fifteen years in a row. Better yet, a year later, they had booked a ticket for the UEFA Cup out of nowhere.

Coached by Zoran Filipovic, a former Benfica forward during the Sven Goren-Eriksson days, the club was mainly fuelled by local youth players and some footballers groomed from the clubs around town. 1990 was a moment where, after a decade and a half of the Carnation Revolution, the geographical centre of the football world in Portugal – as well as the economics of the land – had shifted from south up to the north and clubs like Salgueiros greatly benefited from that. That year the league was also increased to twenty sides, bringing up teams that would become famed in the 1990s such as Farense or Gil Vicente, as well as Famalicão.

In their first season back, the red and whites took everyone by surprise with a very competitive side who, despite only scoring 32 goals all season, managed to win twelve matches and draw twelve to make up 36 points, the same amount as Beira-Mar, who would play the Cup final against FC Porto, whom they beat. Ironically it was one of the most competitive seasons ever as Salgueiros only managed to grab three more points (a win was still 2 points back then) than Tirsense, the first below the drop zone, with ten different sides in between both teams. Only in the penultimate day of the season, as they drew at home against Braga – another side in contention for a European place – did Filipovic’s men booked a place on the UEFA Cup stage for the following year.

TV forces change of venue

The draw dictated that Salgueiros play AS Cannes, who also had a surprising season in Ligue 1, with the first round taking place in September. Despite the club’s wish to play at Vidal Pinheiro they were forced to move out to Bessa so the game could be televised. It would be usual in the 1990s to see Salgueiros play at the Bessa or Maia against the Big Three for a late kick-off and as the sun started to set on the horizon, the home supporters began to pack the Bessa in hope of a night to remember.

Zidane far from the main attraction

Cannes was not as well-known as other rivals but French club football was on a high. Olympique Marseille had just played and lost the European Cup final and AS Monaco, coached by Arséne Wenger and where local idol Rui Barros played his trade, would soon play that season Cup Winner’s Cup final in Lisbon. Nobody knew then about a young teenager by the name of Zinedine Zidane who would start in midfield as all eyes were on veteran Luis Fernandez – an iconic member of the famed Carré Magique of the previous decade – and Cameroon international François Oman-Biyik, who had become a hit celebrity after the 1990 Italy World Cup.

Zinedine Zidane was 19 years old when he made his European debut... in Portugal

Filipovic opted to go with his usual line-up with Madureira in goal, followed by Paulo Duarte, Pedro Reis – the iconic club captain during the 1990s – and Pedrosa in defence alongside França, Nikolic, Milovac, Abílio, Álvaro, Jorge Plácido and Vinha up front. Both Nikolic and Milovac had been scouted by Filipovic himself, taking advantage of his knowledge of Yugoslav football and paving the way for the arrival after the beginning of the Balkan War to Portugal of the likes of Ljublink Drulovic and Zlatko Zahovic in the following years. Abílio was the creative soul of the side, a former Porto youth player who didn’t make it to the first team, despite his immense talent that had just been snatched from Belenenses. In this match he was the Salgueiros equivalent of....Zidane.

Wonder goal wildly celebrated

With the French side playing in all yellow, Salgueiros, who decided to go for an all-red kit in turn, took the upper hand from the start and dominated procedures, showing nerves of steel given that it was their first-ever international display. It was an uneventful match up until the 50th minute when a long thrown-in from the right caused mayhem in Cannes box. The ball went from head-to-head until Jorge Plácido, a former Porto player himself and father of future hip-hop idol Slow J, swung a shot with his left leg that thundered the ball right into the net. The crowd and players went wild and with good reason.

A Bola recreates the Salgueiros goal in cartoon form

Salgueiros held on for the following forty minutes, with Cannes pressing hard but to no avail. At a time when Portuguese football sides were experiencing a short-lived golden age in continental football, with Porto and Benfica playing European Cup finals and Sporting, Boavista and Vitória getting good results as well, many didn’t look up to the Porto side’s achievement as anything out of the ordinary, but in perspective it was one of the most remarkable nights in the history of the game in Portugal.

Second-leg disappointment

Supporters were now hoping to get a good result from the trip to the French Riviera, but everything went sideways. Pedrosa was red-carded on the hour and while Salgueiros held on for another half an hour, Biyik finally broke the deadlock with three minutes remaining on the clock. The Portuguese side defended with their lives during extra time but such heroics were of no use during the penalty shootout that followed. With two goals for each side, Jorge Plácido, the hero of the Bessa match, squandered his shot and allowed Cannes to get the upper hand. Rui Alberto also missed and so Salgueiros was out in the worst possible way, especially for a side so used to suffering. Still, the feat was there for all to see and despite that away day becoming the last European match for the Paranhos squad, it was never forgotten by the club’s supporters.

After a couple of seasons when the bell saved them on the last day of the season, Salgueiros went very close to getting another shot at the UEFA Cup. In the 1996/97 season, now coached by Carlos Manuel, they went to Faro to play the locals in a fight against Vitória SC for fifth place, after having won away at FC Porto and SL Benfica, a club first. Boavista, seventh, had already booked their ticket by playing the Cup final so it was a tussle between the Guimarães team, who played their bitter rivals Braga, and Salgueiros for the last UEFA spot available. As the match was ending, with both sides drawing, Salgueiros had a penalty kick awarded on the hour that could have granted them the much-needed three points. Abilio’s shot went wide and so were their chances of a return to Europe.

Coach Zoran Filipovic was proud of his players and optimistic after the first-leg victory, but Salgueiros went out on penalties in France

Decline

Sadly a few years later the club, already highly indebted, was relegated to the second tier and with the Vidal Pinheiro sold with the promise of a new ground at Arca D’Agua that never materialised, Salgueiros entered into administration. The club was pronounced dead but a group of supporters, faithful to the side’s ethos, kept on struggling and founded what was Portugal’s first supporters club, inspired by what was happening at Wimbledon in England, the Salgueiros 08.

Forced to initiate their activities from the bottom of the football pyramid, with no money nor ground to play in, Salgueiros has managed to survive ever since, up to a point when they have recovered their original name and crest in an auction. They currently sit in the fourth tier, playing at a small ground in the Cerco neighbourhood, across the road from the mighty Dragão stadium.

Proudly surviving

They might be a small club living through difficult times but, in the end, that was part of their identity. What they proved, that late summer night on the poshest side of town, was that even teams from humble backgrounds and working-class spirit can sometimes live the time of their lives. In a sense, they are the perfect definition of what makes the game so special.