Guimarães is the beating heart at the soul of Portuguese football. The game is felt differently in the town that gave birth to the nation. It remains, perhaps, the only city outside Porto and Lisbon where the huge majority of locals support the local club, a tradition that goes back to a time when the game helped reestablish a sense of pride in a city that is of massive historical importance but, progressively, started to lose social and economic relevance right up until the 20th-century industrial revolution.
If Vitória Sport Club is the soul of the city, then its home serves as a local place of worship. For decades now, Estádio Dom Afonso Henriques, formerly known as Estádio Municipal de Guimarães, through its several redevelopments, has become a symbol for the city’s passion for football, but the inception of that passion came decades before when the black and whites played their trade at the long-forgotten Amorosa playing ground.
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In 1964, Vitória moved to the Municipal de Guimarães, a place that has been their home for the past sixty-years. It is a stadium that not only welcomed the club’s most memorable days but also international events such as the 1991 Under-20 World Cup and Euro 2024 – recognition of its massive importance in the nation’s footballing soul. Yet, despite the long-expected move to their new ground, there was a sense of grief among the Vitória faithful as they said goodbye to what had been their home for two decades, a time when the club firmly established itself as one of the nation’s great teams.
Football arrived in Guimarães at the dawn of the 20th century, as with many locations in the Minho region. Soon, a regional rivalry was established with their neighbours Sporting Braga, which was fuelled from the 1920s onwards after Vitória was founded in 1922, following in the footsteps of smaller local clubs who had been playing for a while in several spots around the city. Vitória first moved to the Campo da Atouguia, and then passed the next two decades moving around other small venues such as the Campo da Perdiz, the José Minotes or the Benlhavei grounds, but as the game became increasingly popular in town, all the venues were too small for the crowds the club were already able to congregate by then.
Hostile fans force a change
The Benlhavei was even publicly criticised by opposition players who complained not only that the pitch measures were too small but also that the stands were so close to the pitch that they were often assaulted by the more raucous supporters whenever they moved too close to the wing. The Portuguese Football Federation took those complaints to heart and informed Vitória they would best try to find another venue to host their home games, and the search started almost immediately. A terrain was found in the hill of Amorosa, which sat in the northwestern side of town, close to the Creixomil parish, with a towering view of the city’s historical medieval central streets.
In 1945, the construction works started, with the first instalment paid from Antero Henriques’ own pocket, a board member who would be appointed chairman two years later, with the venue ready to be opened the following campaign. It was clear that, if the club, which had already played in the first tier by then, continued to grow at the same speed, the Amorosa would soon become too small, like all the previous grounds where they played, but Vitória were still biding their time. By the mid-1940s, coming out of World War II, few knew what was going to happen with the fascist regimes in the Iberian Peninsula, and Portugal was still essentially a rural country, particularly in the north. There were no hints that professional football would become as relevant as it did, and clubs took one step at a time. As late as 1946, FC Porto were still playing at the Constituição, Belenenses used the Salésisas ground, and neither Benfica nor Sporting had inaugurated their Estádio da Luz and Estádio José Alvalade grounds yet. So the Amorosa, despite a short-term solution, felt more in tune with its time than what might have been expected by then.
Forging a belligerent identity
The ground became extremely popular among the clubs that supported and hosted what would become the two most decisive decades in Vitória’s existence. It was during this time that the club became a regular first-division side and a firm contender to the claim of the strongest club north of Porto. Located at the Senhora da Conceição neighbourhood, the crowds flocked from every side of town to follow the side’s exploits passionately. It was in this era that the famous rebellious spirit of the Guimarães supporters came to be. It was still a dirt pitch – when many stadiums in Portugal were already grass – and it had small stands, meaning most of the crowd stood around the fences that surrounded the pitch.
In winter, the dirt would turn muddy and, a typical sight would see supporters watching under their umbrellas in the pouring rain as players fought for every ball in swamped conditions. To visit Vitória and come back with a win became one of the toughest assignments for any club in the land, particularly those who visited from the capital, used to a different climate and more amenable playing conditions. It was the Portuguese 1950s version of playing on a wet night at Stoke, and it helped Vitória shape their never-say-die identity that lasts to this day.
Growth
It also allowed the club to progressively grow around the new ground. From the fifties onwards, they became a regular at the top tier. Promoted in 1958 they would be relegated again only once, in 2006, climbing straight back up the following campaign, and in the 1960/61 season, for the first time in their history, Vitória finished fourth, with Edmur, who had become the first foreign player to win the Bola de Prata award for the league’s top scorer, as their main-man. The Brazilian was one of many who were signed in the late fifties who would help the side improve their standing. They would be fourth again in 1963 and play the 1962 Cup final, losing against Sporting at the Jamor.
The crowd numbers of the Amorosa had been decisive for the board led by Alberto Ribeiro Guimarães to define strategic signings that would set the template for the side in the following decade. With new stands built by his successor Casimiro Lima – that allowed a brilliant view over the medieval castle at a time where there where almost no housing in the northern side of the city – the Amorosa was now seen as a symbol of this first golden age for the Vimaranenses and yet rumour had it that the local authorities were planning to build a Municipal ground in the lands nearby to emulate the one in Braga that helped their rivals also turn themselves into first-tier regulars.
Progress signals the end of Amorosa’s days
While the Amorosa belonged to Vitória, the newly projected ground was to be owned by the city hall, and many supporters were distrustful of moving away from something that was theirs, even if that meant an improvement in facilities. From 1960 to 1964, Vitória became one of the most admired sides in Portuguese football, a time the game was experiencing a huge change with Benfica’s and Sporting’s international trophy wins and the professionalized model now adopted wholeheartedly by every top-tier football club.
While the Lisbon, Porto and Setúbal clubs had huge financial backing from the local industries, and Académica was about to enjoy a short-lived golden era due to the quality of the footballers who had decided to get a college degree during the first years of their playing careers, the Minho clubs needed to find resources almost exclusively from local Maecenas and gate receipts. Amorosa couldn’t host more than 10,000 supporters, needed a grass pitch to comply with the Federation’s strict regulations from 1965 onwards and belonged to an era where semi-professional football was still the norm. Its days were numbered.
Marching down the hill
In 1964, the club knew that it would be their final campaign at the Amorosa as construction began on the site where the present-day stadium is still located. The new ground was just a few metres down the hill, so there would be no real difference for supporters who would take the same route to watch the match, only no longer needing to climb the hill. Works were slow, though, and in 1965, when the ground was finally inaugurated, in a match between the local side and Belenenses that the hosts won, there were still no stands around the grass pitch.
Players had to change in the dressing rooms of the Amorosa and then run down the hill to the new stadium, an awkward situation that lasted for the rest of the season as the stands were being built little by little. Against Varzim, Seixal and Torreense, the three promoted sides, Vitória were allowed to play at the Amorosa again, as the Federation only made it mandatory to play on a grass pitch if both sides had been in the top division in the previous campaign.
Suitable sendoff
The last match at the Amorosa was a 7-1 thrashing of Póvoa de Varzim, a worthy send-off for such an important venue. As the area grew, the old Amorosa ground was then demolished to make way for housing, with the city expanding west with the construction of a new hospital a few metres away from the ground. In the late 1960s, the memories of the Amorosa remained very much alive, the club using it for training sessions, as Vitória obtained their first third-place finish and debuted in the Intercity Fairs Cup, beating Banik Ostrava before losing against Southampton. The club’s first golden age ended and would take a decade to be revived, under the leadership of Pimenta Machado, the chairman who managed to redevelop the Municipal ground, with the city hall finally granting the club ownership of the facilities in the early 1990s, as it became a landmark site in Portuguese football.
Club ethos rooted in the Amorosa
Today, as you pass by the Municipal, there seems to be no recollection that just a few steps away, there was a ground that propelled Vitória Sport Club into national royalty. The memories of the Amorosa have long been forgotten, as few remain who suffered those hard winter afternoons surrounding the dirt pitch, watching the white-shirted players bring hell on the opposition. Vitória SC has since become one of the most important sides in the land, and the new ground helped them to establish themselves at the top, but it would never have happened if it weren’t for a pitch gone and still dearly missed by those who understand where the limitless Vitória soul emanated from.
