“The state of Portuguese football is clearly divided into two sides”

O The official, in statements to the Lusa agency, addressed the state of Portuguese football, warned of the difficulties many clubs face in order to survive, and even indicated the direction.

“The state of Portuguese football is clearly divided into two parts. We have the “big ones”, which, fortunately for us, have also achieved good results in Europe, are developing their brands, increasing budgets, the media space is almost reaching 100%, and then we have a second wave, it’s all the rest. And everyone else goes through a lot of difficulties,” he said.

Miguel Ribeiro explained very specifically how these difficulties are reflected.

“In the weakest European competition we have today, the European Conference League, no Portuguese club has reached the group stage in two seasons. Teams live in constant stress from the first round, because, in fact, playing in the I league is living, and not playing in the I league is survival. And I think that it is necessary to look at this panorama and understand that Portuguese football is not only layer 1, but also layer 2. And layer 2 is really living in misery today, because income is small, everything that revolves around this second group of clubs is very short, our media space is very small. I believe that the centralization of television rights with A much more balanced, much more equitable distribution of rights could contribute to the growth of this second group, because if this second group does not grow, Portuguese football will stop growing today,” he warned.