If some Jorge Mendes transfers are seen as controversial in England, you can imagine how it goes in Portugal.
The Portuguese football fans know their most famous agent very well, so they pay a lot of attention to everything that surrounds him.
Just like in any other country, the fans also believe that their football association is biased toward some club. In Portugal’s case, if you add Jorge Mendes to Benfica, you’ll have a true rage in social media.
This Saturday, Wolverhampton and Rotherham drew 2-2 for the Championship’s first fixture. As a partner of the Fuson Group, Jorge Mendes is involved in the club’s rebuild, and is bringing a few former Benfica players to the English side.
What happened is that the official Twitter account of the Portuguese national team tweeted that the Benfica loanee João Teixeira made an assist for Wolves’ second goal.
Assistência de João Teixeira para o 2º! https://t.co/hPle8nGPxZ
— selecaoportugal (@selecaoportugal) 6 de agosto de 2016
Boom. The followers couldn’t get it. “Do you always do these tweets when other Portuguese make assists to goals abroad or only to those who were formed at Benfica?”, asked one of them. “To all who are part of the Mendes world”, replied another. The furious fans were many.
A few minutes before the controversial tweet, Norwich City beat Blackburn Rovers 4-1, and they did the same with Ivo Pinto’s two assists in the game. There was complete silence then.
People see what they want to see.
Last Friday, we talked about the attention from the Portuguese papers to the Championship this season, since many players are joining the league.
Now the games have just started and the buzz is already funny. Portuguese papers tend to have a nice dose of sensationalism, with the fans normally buying into that.
We can’t wait for the headlines.
