Portugal’s Junior Team: The successors to the “Golden Generation”

It was one of the greatest days in the history of Portuguese football. A crowd of 120,000 packed the stadium in Lisbon on August 30 to watch the final of the FIFA Junior World Cup. Portugal, the hosts from Europe, played Brazil, the South American country with a close relationship to the Portuguese. After a dramatic, however goalless match of 120 minutes, a penalty shoot-out had to decide: Portugal won 4-2, and successfully defended their first ever title at the 1989 FIFA World Cup™, with a 2-0 victory against Nigeria in the final in Saudi-Arabia. The Portuguese were enthusiastic about their “Golden Generation” of young talents, such as Figo, Rui Costa and Joao Pinto who eventually became world stars. The Portuguese juniors have, however, failed to celebrate a similar triumph at UEFA European Under-21 Championships. They reached the final once, but lost 1-0 to Italy after extra time in Montpellier, France, on April 20, 1994.

The “Golden Generation”, built around Figo, lost the final of the UEFA European Football Championship™ 2004 1-0 to Greece in Lisbon, just as the entire country hoped to finally achieve a major title. Two years later, when Portugal hosted the finals of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship on May 4-June 4, history repeated itself. Portugal’s juniors were considered one of the hot favourites, not only because of home advantage but because of their brilliant results in the qualifying matches. Portugal had reached the play-off matches with maximum points (30) from 10 games, and a goal tally of 29-3 against Russia, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia and Luxembourg. In the play-offs against Switzerland, however, the team encountered a few problems. After a 1-1 draw away in Switzerland they were down in the home match, but ultimately won 2-1.

The tournament for the European crown proved a great disappointment: The hosts finished fourth and last in their group. France dominated the group with nine points, followed by Serbia, Germany and Portugal who all achieved three points. It was small consolation for the Portuguese that they prevented Germany from reaching the semi-finals, by defeating them 1-0 in their last group match after two defeats by France (1-0) and Serbia (2-0).

The Portuguese juniors once again proved a bit unstable on their road to the finals of the 2007 UEFA European Under-21 Championship 2007. In a shortened qualifying round they defeated Latvia 2-0 away and then beat Poland 2-0 at home. In the first play-off match Russia crushed them 4-1 at home. João Pereira was shown a red card, after his second yellow, at 1-1 in the 42nd minute. The Russians used their superior numbers for the convincing victory, following which the Portuguese qualification for the finals seemed almost impossible.

However, the team showed strong nerves in the second play-off in Porto winning 3-0. Thus the two play-offs between the juniors from Portugal and Russia resulted in a 4-4 draw, but the south west Europeans qualified for the European finals by the away goals rule. Paulo Machado’s equaliser for 1-1 in the 12th minute in the away match in Moscow eventually proved immensely valuable. The winners were, however, thankful for unintended support from the Russians. Unlucky Ivan Taranov opened the door to the finals for the Portuguese by scoring an own goal in the 71st minute to assist the 3-0 final score.

The successors to the “Golden Generation” will meet the hosting Dutch team, Belgium and Israel in the UEFA European Football Championship™ finals. Coach José Couceiro is in charge of this promising team. The 44-year-old former professional was one of the successors to José Mourinho with UEFA Champions League winners FC Porto. He took over the job in February of 2005, but his contract was not extended at the end of the season when Porto lost the battle with Benfica for the national championship. “The intelligent and passionate Couceiro learned from Mourinho to be very disciplined and to openly say what he thinks”, reads a portrait of Couceiro on the website of the European Football Association, UEFA. Couceiro took over the position of Portugal’s national junior coach in the summer of 2006, after coaching CF Belenenses for one year.