A celebration for the ages

Pandemonium.

Sardine bones. Little frilly complex things that stick in your gums. Lisbon is in sardine season now. The unpretentious oily little fish is the symbol of summer here. Little grills sit on pavement edges wafting out the familiar aroma. It is the sight and the smell of summer in Portugal. The most unobtrusive little fish, the sardine. I can smell them now but my focus is on the television, which is wobbling as a clutch of bodies pass and pass again leaping and yelling. We were supposed to be having sardines, I keep thinking. My heart is leaping, everyone shrieking and shouting, a din arising outside. Something weird is happening. The world is turning upside down and they’ve not served the sardines. This can’t be happening. Not here, not to Portugal.  

Uproar.

As the scolding, searing reality hit us all starkly between the eyes, people poured from every entrance. Out onto the street came a tidal wave of humanity of all shapes and sizes. Youngsters screaming incoherently, blasting on cheap plastic trumpets, pensioners dawdling out into the night holding onto stair rails as they emerged into the gathering gloom. Mothers and fathers hugging in gay abandon. Only when they got to the door, there was no gloom to be seen on this night, real or metaphorical, only stunning, blinding light.

The air was already full of screaming and shouting, tooting and whistling as we ran for the car.  Joining a heavy throng at the foot of Campo Grande, the great sprawling park that stretches three kilometres through the initial parts of central Lisbon from Sporting’s Estádio Alvalade to Campo Pequeno’s famous bullring, we began the trek into town. As the cars jostled noisily into position and began the long haul down Avenida da República, shining faces packed every window, flags twirled from every open roof and horns blared incessantly. The sheer vibrant unleashed joy filling the air made it absolutely impossible not to join in. The car was being rocked by exuberant passers-by, playful thumps to the bonnet, people leaning in to high five and shout their glee.  

As we edged deeper into the fitful flow of traffic, it was apparent something unique was taking place. A nation of politely introspective souls were going bananas. The road, a four lane stretch of asphalt quite used to carrying and coping with Lisbon’s not inconsiderable commuter traffic every working day was already completely jammed with tooting cars, jeeps, makeshift trollies and people on foot whooping and jogging alongside. Everywhere you looked the colours of Portugal blurred the night sky.

Fire crackers, drums, and the sound of delirium all around us. Bikes and scooters weaving in between, shouting voices everywhere. All around us the throaty, guttural cry of Por-tu-gal! Por-tu-gal! Por-tu-gal. A melancholy nation of Fado singers was exploding into sudden, unexpected, but glorious chest-beating pride. The heavy yoke of Salazar, the horse hair punishment of Ricardo Salgado and his banking fiascos, of every joke politician, of every painful cent lost to the economic crisis, of grimacing Angela Merkel  and every strangling Troika restriction was being cast off and replaced with the airy clothes of summer, a summer that will go on and on, a summer that will stretch from the limpid Algarvian shores, the fresh Atlantic surf of the Costa Vicentina, the sand banks of Arrábida and Troia, through the giant wave basins of Nazaré and Espinho and on up to Viana do Castelo. A summer that will reach the interior and breathe a cool air of triumph on the baked streets of Évora and Monsaraz, of Odemira and Guarda. A summer that will colour the white washed walls of Alcochete and Golegã.  

This quiet little paradise of cabbages and bacalhau and vinho tinto will have its day of glory after all.

By Picoas we were in a log jam. Discarding the car in a place you would never dare attempt during hours of daylight, even in this city of wonderfully flexible highway legislation, we completed the journey on foot. A makeshift charabanc, half jeep half Continente delivery buggy stood four stories tall with people clinging to its sides. Festooned in flags, it looked like something an ambitious pre-schooler might have tried to enter for the Torres Vedras Carnival. That it did not just topple over there and then was tantamount to the most decisive metaphor for Fernando Santos’s intricate team building there could be. It wasn’t the most beautiful vehicle, nor the most roadworthy but the damn thing just refused to fall down. It was going all the way to Marquês de Pombal and be damned. We all were, one way or another. It felt like the whole city was on the move.

Strangers were flying into our arms and hugging us. The wife, Franco Portuguese, completely overcome with the joy of the occasion, had by now taken to shouting at everyone in English. Her hair, vertical and in a state of shock, from sitting outside on the car door hanging out into the traffic like a fresh asylum escapee, climbed all over her face. “We did it we did it, little Portugal has done it” she shouted, tears flowing generously. Quietly reminding her she should try communicating with the locals in her own mother tongue was pointless. The high of adrenaline was carrying people off in strange directions.

We proceeded to the grass banks overlooking the expansive circle of Marques de Pombal. The ancestral celebration place of a thousand and one occasions was already completely awash with red and green, smoke rising in powerful plumes from the throbbing  epicentre of the baying crowd. The place filled and filled, swelling its ranks and noise in equal measure. The thin cool air was being sucked clean out of the night sky to keep this mass of thriving humanity going. And keep going it did, bolstered from Rua Braancamp by the communities of Estrela and Rato, from all sides of Parque Eduardo VII they kept coming, from Avenida de Liberdade, from Rossio and Martim Moniz and far beyond.

And there behold, into the throng tottered the makeshift Continente flag-festooned trolley. It too had made it down, completing the metaphorical journey from Iceland to France, its giddy occupants unsure how much celebrating its flimsy sides could take.

In the old bairros of Alfama and Graça, Mouraria and Lapa, street parties were under way under the canopy of stars and billowing smoke. Toothless drunks danced with teenage girls and grannies lifted their skirts to cavort about the cobbles, hauling back the years. The party of a lifetime was truly in full swing.

In the meantime scribes were beginning to batter at their keyboards to define what had just passed before their eyes. Bloodshot, tear-stained, the search for the bons mots to describe what had just transpired began in earnest. Was it a gunshot past the ear, or a frying pan to the back of the head? Was it the coolest Vinho Verde or a welcoming cup of Douro red? Was it the poetry in motion of Pessoa or the first white waves breaking over the rocks at The Cape of Good Hope? Was it a sardine or a great white shark? Was it a bee sting to the derriere or a moth tickling your eyebrow?

This, my friends, the founding fathers had never planned for.

Portugal, led by its cracked-faced manager Fernando Santos, the wizened, non-smiling veteran with the gravel voice and downward slanting Malboro lights, had carried the day.  

Tomorrow could wait we thought but it came soon enough.

The day after

Carrying hangovers that told their own story, we reassembled for the home coming of the heroes from overseas. They were to meet the President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, we were told. What an introduction to the presidency for him, dragging his newly elected frame through France to witness all of that and following it up with a sun-drenched party at the Palácio de Belém with the nation’s heroes. Has there ever been such a gleesome political debut?

With the massed throngs in the gardens of Belém being treated to the first sight of the decorated heroes, we waited patiently in the punishing heat of Alameda, the great sweep of park in front of Fonte Luminosa, a perfect space to join crowd with team. Behind the giant fountain, gushing thousands of litres of sparkling water, and a little bit along towards the noisy artery of Morais Soares lies the hilltop bairro of Penha de França, birthplace of Fernando Santos. It sits perched high above the similarly unassuming streets of Arroios and on the way to Graça, whose streets give out onto the most famous views of the city. Wholly appropriate in the circumstances, this down at heel, dusty and unassuming district of narrow roads, ordinary-looking neighbourhood groceries and bare-walled tascas reflects the no-nonsense character of Portugal’s coach perfectly. The smell of grilled sardines and fresh washing flying in the breeze will have been the predominant childhood aromas for the well-travelled coach, much as they are now for the noisy kids hanging around in the shade of the shop entrances in their rip-off Cr7 and Figo shirts. 

As the big screen at Alameda showed the procession heading up Avenida Almirante Reis, the noise from the crowd on the huge sweep of green began to rise. A sea of flags and scarves greeted the two open buses as they stuttered slowly to a halt and disgorged their precious cargo. Once more an out-pouring of emotion rolled down that manicured hillside towards the squad assembling on the podium. The heroes of the hour, looking overjoyed, elated and exhausted took their places in front of the nation and watched as the sea of banners and flags fluttered and the flood of noise came surging down to meet then. More smoke, red, green and white billowing up towards the refined apartments on either side, where balconies were packed with more revelers. The songs of victory rang out again and again, a lusty chorus of As Armas, led by the players themselves.

Portugal’s hour had come, long after the end of the Golden Generation, long long after the King’s attempts were floored at the last hurdle at Wembley in 1966, long after a forlorn nation had given up hope of ever seeing their men at the top of the footballing tree.

And yet, in among all the adulation and the singing, the wet eyes and the cheering, some felt the need to say Portugal’s football philosophy in 2016 debased the tournament. What we celebrate in Italy, that dogged never-say-die defence, the canny midfield closure, the take-your-one-chance striking, we denigrate when it wears the green and red of Portugal.

My ESPN colleague, Chris Jones, even went as far as to say that Portugal’s victory sucked, was a defeat for all of us and a defeat for football. Well, he had profoundly misunderstood something here. A history lesson of many decades that should have told him that Portugal have already tried the pretty way and lost and lost again. They have carried the reputation for technically beautiful football through Simões to Futre and Costa to Ronaldo and it has won them nothing. Fernando Santos came in at a low ebb for the national side and brought a steely organisation to the party. He taught his troops to be proud of winning, whether it be fancy or not, to stick to their guns and to stick together, that there was more than one way to skin a rabbit. For this was and is a victory for the collective, another first for Portugal in the superstar eras of Cristiano Ronaldo and Luís Figo and Eusébio. It was a victory achieved for the most part without their talisman, injured so early on by Dmitri Payet’s unpunished assault.

This was a victory for butterflies, not moths. This was a victory for non-scoring strikers, Ederzito António Macedo Lopes, from a simple foster home in Alcarraques via Swansea to European glory. This was a victory for a nation that has been patient beyond the realms of understanding. A victory for the eternal semi finalist, quarter finalist, semi finalist. It was a victory for good housekeeping over frivolous overindulgence. It was a victory for the common man over the behemoths. The day the sardine swallowed the lobster. 

Well, now France knows how it felt in 2004. The bridesmaids have stolen the bouquet, the cake and the groom’s trousers. Portugal has its champions. Its European champions and now the summer will go on forever.

By Simon Curtis