Portuguese Liga Starting to Look Like the National Hockey League
By: Greg | July 19th, 2007
The Portuguese Board of Tourism must be smiling right now. Apparently, their recent advertising campaign in Eastern Europe has paid dividends. As a result, footballers from all over parts of the former Soviet Union are lining up in droves to play in Portugal.
Okay, so those first few lines are complete bullshit, but can you find me an explanation as to why this transfer season has brought a prevalence of players from Eastern Europe into the league? With the preliminary agreement between Porto and Turkish Premier Super League (Who in the hell named that league? The same guys from Capcom who used to come up with such gems as ‘Super Street Fighter II Turbo?’) side Trabzonspor on the signature of defender Milan Stepanov, that makes a total of six Eastern Europeans signed by the Big Three alone.
I understand it when players from Brazil, Angola, and Cape Verde come to Portugal, because the language is essentially the same (Brazilians tend to swap the hard ‘t’ sound for a ‘ch’ sound). But is there some weird fascination with upping the ratings for hockey games in Portugal? With these six players coming in, I’m willing to bet they increase a televised hockey game’s rating six fold.
I racked my brain for explanations regarding this quirky phenomenon and all I can come up with is the fact that these players seem to cost quite a bit less than average. Teams such as Porto are getting a bonanza of money from the sale of players like Pepe and Anderson and then turning around and only spending 5-10% of that money gained on fresh talent.
If I’m a Porto fan (ewww) I’m furious. I pay absurd amounts of money for scarves, tops, tickets, and trinkets. For what? For my team to turn around and sell almost all of our superstars only to have them be replaced with 3.5 million Euro players like Stepanov? Porto are in the group stages of the Champions League for chrissakes! Ridiculous…
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Well first off its actually the “Turkcell super lig” which translates to Turkcell Super League. Turkcell is the sponsor of the league. And second, I always Turkish soccer and i can assure you that Stepanov is a good player, with enough work from Porto’s trainers he can easily keep up with the Portuguese Leagues standards, besides hes only 23, good talent if you ask me for his age.
Interestingly enough, Turkey is also witnessing something similar to what the Portugese are. Many teams in Turkey, Cough Fenerbahce Cough, are buying many Brazilian players for low prices while not giving enough credit to the younger generation, Cough unlike Galatasaray cough.
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