African Tours
As early as the 1930s, and increasingly commonly from the 1940s on, metropolitan clubs toured the Portuguese colonies during the summer, following the conclusion of their domestic seasons. These tours were extremely popular, drawing both European and African fans to a series of exhibition matches. Although residents in the colonies could connect with their favorite metropolitan teams through local affiliate clubs and popular media, neither form of engagement rivaled witnessing “the real thing.” Eventually, African migrant footballers themselves served as promotional agents of the sport in the colonies, returning home with their respective touring metropolitan clubs to play in the matches against local squads.
Notwithstanding the eventual success and popularity of the tours, they began rather inauspiciously and not without a host of associated obstacles, many logistical. Indeed, prior to widespread air travel, these forays to the colonies necessitated maritime travel, which entailed weeks at sea just to reach, for example, Luanda from Lisbon, and additional time to circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope to arrive at Lourenço Marques. With limited time for players to rest and rejuvenate during the summer months, this type of elongated travel was particularly onerous. Upon arrival in the colonies, metropolitan-based footballers also voiced their grievances related to the rudimentary playing conditions, namely the dirt pitches. The disagreeable nature of the tour experience at times colored the competitors’ interactions as well. As Bittencourt reveals, “Some of these sporting encounters in Angola (and presumably elsewhere, as well) were marked by altercations between players from Portuguese clubs and those from Angola, as happened with Acadêmica in 1938, Benfica in 1949, and C.U.F. in 1954.”37 And it wasn’t always the African-based players who instigated these fisticuffs. According to Bittencourt, CUF players sparked the 1954 incident as, having just won the second division in Portugal, they were “bitter” after losing 6–1 to a team of Luanda-based footballers.38
Although metropolitan clubs were always favored to triumph in these matches, they occasionally failed to play their part, as supposedly inferior, yet manifestly plucky, teams from the colonies periodically won and, just as CUF discovered, sometimes by wide margins. Metropolitan clubs were most vulnerable when they were matched up against teams composed of the most talented footballers from the colonial capitals, essentially local “all-star” squads, and especially when those squads featured players who would later go on to star in Portugal. Even when the typically racially diverse colonial teams didn’t win, though, they instilled local pride among both indigenous residents and settlers.39 Indeed, Domingos has argued that these sporting visits constituted “instances in which the settler could demonstrate his vitality in front of a representative of the empire’s ruling center.”40
The impetuses for these footballing jaunts varied, changed over time, and are still debated. What is irrefutable is that the tours were lucrative for the participating clubs, with the revenues on offer providing ample motivation (and explanation) for their realization. But the tours also appear to have featured a patriotic/political dimension, a way to reaffirm the links between the metropole and the empire, which collectively composed the multisited mundo português, or Portuguese world. Ana Santos, writing about Benfica’s tours throughout the empire, indicates that metropolitan media traveled with the club and filed multiple daily reports, thereby reinforcing the regime’s emphasis on political union. Santos further explains that upon arrival in the capitals of Angola and Mozambique, the club was regaled with the same honors that visiting heads of state received.41 The regime’s official recognition of such sporting forays was seemingly intended to confirm its mantra, and associated propaganda, that “Portugal is not a small country” (see fig. 1.1). Indeed, even if the Estado Novo neither engineered nor mandated the tours, Lisbon certainly condoned these constitutive examples of what Michael Billig has called “banal nationalism”—the seemingly insignificant, yet highly efficacious, everyday representations of the state that collectively cultivate a national, imagined sense of community.42
Elsewhere, Lanfranchi and Taylor have unambiguously referred to these trips as “propaganda tours,” while Marcos Cardão has written extensively about their explicitly political objectives.43 For example, in addition to providing local entertainment, Benfica’s tour of Portuguese Goa in 1960 was seemingly intended to remind indigenous subjects of their imperial connections and responsibilities. The presence of General Vassalo e Silva, the governor-general of the colony, at the associated events was undoubtedly intended to reinforce this message and to signal to neighboring India that Goa remained Portuguese territory. Yet, while the Indian brass may have been impressed by the football on display, they patently ignored the political overtones: just one year later, the Indian army successfully invaded Goa, quickly removing what Jawaharlal Nehru had described as “a pimple on the face of India.”
Following the outbreak of the struggles for independence in the African colonies, beginning in Angola in the initial months of 1961, the tours became undeniably political, with the participating clubs requiring no patriotic prodding. For example, in May 1961, less than five months after the outbreak of violence in Angola, Benfica offered to play a match in Luanda against a team of Angolans, with the receipts from the game going to “the victims of terrorism” in the colony.44 Shortly thereafter, Benfica threw its support behind not only the civilian victims of the Angolan nationalists, but also the Portuguese armed forces, who had, in the meantime, commenced a brutal counterinsurgency campaign. The following summer, in 1962, Benfica toured both Angola and Mozambique, declaring in its official organ, O Benfica, that the club was bringing “the brilliance of its prestige and its metropolitan friendship to the Portuguese, who are fighting in Africa for the integrity and the continuation of the Pátria.”45 As Cardão registers, “One of the stated objectives of this tour was to raise funds for the construction of a hospital for the recuperation of the soldiers of the Forças Armadas [Portuguese armed forces] who were engaged in combat in the African colonies.”46
Figure 1.1. Replica propaganda map of the type regularly generated by the Portuguese regime during its reign.
Notwithstanding this political overtness, it is important to note that Portuguese clubs also traveled to other places in Africa (and South America), belying contentions that these tours were exclusively intended to deepen colonial control. Furthermore, clubs from all over Europe (as well as some from South America—most notably, Brazilian squads—and others from South Africa) also toured the Portuguese colonies, underscoring the fact that not every visit by a foreign club was intended to reinforce the links between the metropole and the empire.47
Once Portuguese clubs began utilizing players from the colonies, the tours also provided opportunities for metropolitan team officials to identify, scout, and, in some cases, sign talented African-based footballers. For African hopefuls, the matches constituted occasions to showcase their skills in the hopes of making lasting impressions on prospective employers. One rather extraordinary example of this phenomenon occurred in Angola during Benfica’s summer 1960 tour. Already aware of the prodigious talents of José Águas, who played for Lusitano Lobito, Benfica officials indicated that they would be assessing the footballer’s skills during the scheduled matches, one of which was surprisingly won, 3–1, by a team of Lobito-based “all-stars,” with Águas tallying a brace against the famous Lisbon club. Exceptionally, the nineteen-year-old striker signed for and immediately joined Benfica as they proceeded onward to other stops on their African tour, and he would eventually go on to play thirteen more seasons for the club.
Irrespective of the particular motivations for these tours, or even the final scores of the constituent matches, they were immensely popular, granting adoring, football-frenzied fans in the colonies opportunities to witness their heroes perform at close range. For example, responding to my question regarding the turnouts for matches involving touring metropolitan clubs, Augusto Matine responded:
