YOU land at Faro airport in southern Portugal, one of Europe’s poorest regions. Some farmers here still plough using the horse in an area that is not so different from northern Africa, a few kilometres across the sea.
The people who have jobs here mostly live off tourism - "serving cocktails to retired Britons," according to O Jogo, a Portuguese sports newspaper, which in truth is a football journal.
You drive into the sunny night - retired Britons obviously c
ome here for the heat - past new hotels, swimming pools being dug, and beautiful olive-skinned people. Mostly, however, the area is empty.
You drive on and suddenly, in the midst of nowhere, is a new 30,000-seat football stadium. It cost 30m, which in a way represents a triumph, for Faro’s facility is the only one of 10 stadiums built for Euro 2004 not to run massively over budget.
But the exercise is almost pointless. After hosting only three Euro 2004 matches, the stadium might as well vanish. Faro’s best team, Louletano, play in Portugal’s third division, and average 400 fans per match. And yet, despite the fact that Portugal could not afford to host the championships, the country saw football as a way of earning international respect.
Four hundred years ago, thanks to developing maritime navigational skills, Portugal’s empire stretched from Brazil through southern Africa to Macao in Asia. Then the country went into decline.
In 1933, after centuries of poverty, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar founded a regime that combined fascism with fanatical Catholicism, the country of "fado, Fatima and futebol" as exiled dissidents referred to their homeland. It was only brought to an end in 1974 when a military, tired of fighting colonial wars in Africa, took over the streets of Lisbon and overthrew Salazar’s successor, Marcello Caetano, brandishing guns decorated with flowers in the so-called "revolution of the carnations".
Salazar encouraged the obsession with football to keep people’s minds off politics, declaring Eusebio a "national treasure" and forbidding him from joining a foreign club that might have paid him more than a couple of hundred dollars a month.
"Salazar was my slavemaster, just as he was the slavemaster of the entire country," Eusebio reflected.
Inspired by the iconic Mozambican, Portugal reached the 1966 World Cup and made the semi-finals only to lose to England, prompting a tradition: the conspiracy theory.
"We were a small, poor country and we showed the world we deserved to win," Eusebio recalled. "We were supposed to play in Liverpool, at Goodison Park, but England decided they wanted to switch the game to Wembley. They asked FIFA to change the venue in mid-competition. FIFA did a deal with them, and we were forced to take the train down to London, just before the game.
"This was terrible. We had prepared to play in Liverpool. The change forced us to scrap our training plans. I looked up to God in heaven and screamed at the top of my lungs: ‘What have we done to deserve this?’ There was no reply. I knew the answer.We were poor and small. England was rich and powerful, and they were the hosts.
"And then I cried. I cried a long time. Had we played in Liverpool, as planned, we would have won that game and reached the final. There is no question about it."
The conspiracy theory had experienced a resurgence in Portugal lately, as a nation had anticipated the golden generation, who won the 1991 under-20s World Cup, achieving what Eusebio’s team could not by winning a major trophy.
It looked like their time had come at Euro 2000. But, drawing with France with a minute of their semi-final left, Abel Xavier saved a shot on the goalline, and Zinedine Zidane converted the resultant penalty. Xavier went on to mishandle the referee, but the Portuguese still cried foul.
Two years later at the World Cup they were complaining again after exiting at the group stages, losing 1-0 to South Korea in a game marked by the weird refereeing that would take Korea to the semis. Cue Joao Pinto to be sent off: he then punched the referee.
Portuguese exits were becoming undignified.
All of which reveals the importance which the Portuguese place on football in raising their worldwide profile. Take the status that Luis Figo enjoys.
In 2002, the state presented him with a medal for improving the country’s image. "He is the best means of exporting Portugal," said Vitor Neto, secretary of state for tourism. "In the last 30 years, the most important episodes for Portugal have been the revolution of April 25, the entry into the EU, staging the Expo ’98, the Nobel Prize for literature given to Jose Saramago, and Figo’s election as world footballer of the year.
"Saramago with the pen and Figo with the ball have enabled us to reduce the geographical distance that has always been an obstacle, and stopped us from feeling close to Europe."
Euro 2004 was meant to celebrate Portugal’s rebirth as a European country, and the bid was conceived when it was enjoying a long economic boom. Now it is in recession.
Last year it plunged past Greece to become the EU’s poorest member state. The slide is documented by Rene Zwaap, author of Fado, Fatima and Futebol: Sketches of Portugal. The country has no money to pay teachers, bridges and viaducts tend to collapse, and 10% of the population - many from former African colonies - live below the poverty line.
And meanwhile the country is stumping up 661m for 10 football stadiums, most of which will be obsolete after Euro 2004. Faro is only the most glaring example. Aveiro’s new ground can seat 30,000, but hosted only two tournament matches before being passed to a club averaging under 5,000 spectators per match.
Madness. The Portuguese writer, Miguel Sousa Tavares, launched a campaign against the tournament; Jose Nuno Coelho, a sociologist, spoke of "the dictatorship of Euro 2004", and the "totalitarian footballisation of the Portuguese nation"; finance minister Manuela Ferreira Leite said that she wished Portugal were not hosting Euro 2004. She thinks the country will never recover the billions spent.
No wonder the government issued a decree reminding Portugal’s footballers that the national interest was at stake.
Imagine a British pensioner, in 30 years, driving past Faro’s football stadium. "Rather old," he might ponder, "and quite splendid for such a small poor town. Wonder why they built it?"
Many Portuguese are already wondering. The end of isolation has proved expensive.
