Miguel Sousa Tavares Obrigado (in english)

Amigo Kosta Obrigado

Miguel Sousa Tavares on one of the best articles written by themselves

This year starts well...

Since this season began, I had made myself a promise, hold me up to not to give encouragement to these chronic habitual climate of blind partisanship that feed hatred and endless suspicions and from seeing and recognizing the merit of others where it exists. It's been halfway through the league and never, once it was, I spoke about arbitration: or those of my club, or those of others; praised more than once, the evident progress of the football Benfica, writing that it was the team that more and better was to play, and I had a doubt recognize as more than just their recent victory over FC Porto. I did my best for the health of the environment. And put up with me as far as I could.

But to many, things start getting difficult to fit without reacting.

The day before yesterday, for example, reading the text, supposedly funny, Diogo Quintela, I thought the manager of FC Porto should abandon its traditional passivity litigant and put him a criminal proceeding for defamation, as the text amply deserves.

Perhaps you prefer the popular justice to democratic justice, may prefer the truth to the popular established truth as such, perhaps the judgments of common law (and not the population futobolística) you do not deserve any respect, perhaps not even bother to know them. But surely knows that insist on lies unmasked for justice is a slander and know that offends not only the chairman of FC Porto, but all portistas, while having fun writing dialogues alleged that Pinto da Costa buying a referee for 2,500 euros.

Goebbels said that a lie told over and over becomes truth. But Goebbels lost and democracies triumphed.

Perhaps Diogo Quintela not like, but it is this: there are rules in the game.The FC Porto should also abandon their passivity that disputing the process is coming and that promises to be tumultuous, of the Board half team against FC Porto, the purpose of what that more and more I'm tempted to call"the ambush of Light'.

And it should start by raising an incident of suspicion against the entire cast of the CD and, in particular, against its president, Dr. Ricardo Costa.

The recent history of "justice" of the CD is full of facts that show more than enough password persecution of Dr. Costa and the CD against FC Porto.

This body and this president can not guarantee minimum exemption to judge FC Porto.

Have questions? I do not know if you noticed how, a few days ago, Dr. Costa has spread through trusted journalists, the information of the decision "unprecedented" that the CD was taken to appeal against a decision of its own appeal body, the Council of Justice (for the first plenum of the CJ himself, then what is announced and in case of failure, to the administrative court).

No doubt the decision is unprecedented and even strange - or not, as we shall see. As noted Jose Manuel Meirim in public, is unprecedented and strange appeal a court appeal against the decision of the appeal (this is how the Court of Appeal could appeal a decision of the Supreme), and leads to the CD leave the its role as a judge to take part in a question to both take the vanity of Dr. Ricardo Costa.

Stranger still is that so hard to think the CD is to only one minor issue: the responsibility for relations with the press of FC Porto insulted a journalist working a stadium (unfortunately common thing with all the clubs ...). What should be condemned, no doubt: convicted of insulting a journalist in service. But Dr. Ricardo Costa wanted more and decided to convict him of insulting, not a journalist, but "a sports agent '- argument absurd and even insulting to journalists, the CJ, on appeal, obviously rejected. And it is this CJ's decision that Dr. Costa decided to go, aiming to create new doctrine - as he did in the past, with results that should lead, if not to resign, at least a modicum of modesty andrestraint.

Now, the curious of this "unprecedented" decision of the CD - released soon after the incidents of the tunnel of Light - is that it appears to be anything but innocent. Notice how it all fit together: if Dr. Costa achieve maturity in his thesis that a journalist in the stadium is a "sports agent", you can also support following a security in the stadium tunnel is also a "sports agent". And it will be possible to apply to half the FC Porto those dementia penalties of suspension from one to six years, the Disciplinary Regulations to include the attacks on "sports agents." Yet come the turn of the seller of roasted chestnuts at the door stadium it is held also "sports agent" ... if it serves to punish players from FCPorto.

About what really happened in the tunnel of light, we are all waiting to know the already famous images as the feature film produced by TV-Benfica. Everyone, no: half the world already knows. I've heard them reported by several Benfica and day before yesterday here in Circle, could read a detailed account of the events alleged in the tunnel, based, or images, or the version of them was told the journalist. 'BALL know ...», writing here. BALL knows? And as you know - saw the images, which is supposed to have been delivered by the CD Benfica League and nobody else? And we have seen, who showed Lhas - Benfica or CD? And if he saw them, as you know - if not by reports of a party, taken as indisputable fact?

Too bad the ball did not know other things, starting with what it means to disclose parts of the accusation, before there even was accused, and to distribute them in such terms that the defense - (which does not even have access to anything, not even know what is the charge in concrete) - already has an order written in the pages of newspapers. And it is unfortunate that the ball does not know an answer to other issues: the security guards have the right to be there? It is customary in other fields, are in the tunnel outside the games, mixed with the players? The guards were then Benfica in the tunnel, caladinhos and quiet, and they were unexpectedly attacked by a troupe of players that portistas following already locked in his cabin, they decided to draw out for attack? BALL AND does not know that, in addition to the dogfight scenes of the tunnel, the thrust of this story is to realize that there were security guards Benfica and what was your role in the events?

For avoidance of doubt, clarify my position: aggression must be punished, first criminal, then the disciplinary matters. But here, in just proportion to the gravity of the cause and circumstances of the assault and the representativeness of the sports beaten - that's all. Until then, we all agree. Now, make this the decisive weapon for Benfica to be champion this year, not that! Shame on you! Stems that are capable of being champions in the field and not in the tunnel, which are capable of winning a championship without buying the transfer of the stadium and games without the help of friends made in decision-making positions in the league, that in times Luís Filipe Vieira claimed to be more important than having a good football team!

Partisan or not, I think, and always thought the best should win and for all to see. And I repeat that if the championship was over now, the best was Benfica. And to think he did very well to our competitiveness need to back a winner Benfica, but as it should be. However, there is still half championship and I want it to be played until the end on an equal footing. After a decade of frustration and mediocrity interrupted only by an instrument to convince anyone, this is what I want, if benfiquista. But the self-proclaimed 'moralizing' of Portuguese football have proved that is not contained and which, under their cover of virgins chaste, not very concerned with the means to reach the ends they desire. It is natural: the losers do not like to fight in the open.

And the year 2010 opened here on Ball with another of those periodic interviews the President of Benfica. Six pages - the cover, a full page of praise and four self-praise, disguised as an interview. And the New Year's Day dawned gray and worn. Like the speech of the character.