Boavista fans would have thought things could not possibly get worse. In early July, a month away from celebrating their 123rd anniversary, the former champions of Portugal, faced with liquidation, announced that the \u201cspecial revitalisation plan\u201d they had put together last November had been rejected by the Portuguese football federation: they had failed to provide the necessary tax and social security certificates and guarantees in time.<\/p>\n
Riddled with debt (they owed \u20ac7m (\u00a36.1m) to the construction company entrusted with the development of their stadium), they were so short of money that electricity had been cut off at their Est\u00e1dio de Bessa in April after they failed to pay their bill. Players waited months to receive their salary. One of them, the US defender Reggie Cannon, whose pay was late in 28 of the 29 months he spent at Boavista, terminated his contract in the summer of 2023 and joined Queens Park Rangers. After an appeal at the court of arbitration for sport, it was announced last month that Boavista will have to compensate him<\/a> to the tune of \u20ac400,000.<\/p>\n Even when Porto\u2019s second club finished bottom of the Primeira Liga last season, supporters clung to the hope that the club would be allowed to regroup in the second division, but Boavista did not even try to appeal against the federation\u2019s decision. They knew their race was run. They lost their professional status, were demoted to the fifth tier and are due to play in the regional Porto football association\u2019s first division<\/a> next season.<\/p>\n But Boavista hadn\u2019t quite reached the bottom yet. Five days later, on 15 July, police officers used a battering ram to break into the club\u2019s headquarters to seize documents, hard drives and computers. The suspicion was that at least six of the club\u2019s executives, none of whom has been named, had engaged in tax fraud, credit fraud and money laundering. Boavista\u2019s majority owner, the Spanish-Luxembourgian businessman G\u00e9rard L\u00f3pez, is not one of the six defendants singled out by Portuguese police and no criminal charges have been pressed against him. Lawyers for L\u00f3pez said he and the other current board members were the \u201calleged injured party\u201d.<\/p>\n The executives singled out by police were thought to have embezzled an estimated \u20ac10m with the complicity of accountants, lawyers and auditors. The former club of Nuno Gomes, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Ra\u00fal Meireles may not only face relegation and bankruptcy but extinction.<\/p>\n There is a sense of deja vu about the catastrophe. It is not the first time that L\u00f3pez, an early investor in Skype and the former owner of the Formula One team Lotus (whom he sold for a symbolic euro to Renault in 2015 after they faced bankruptcy), finds his name associated with a club\u2019s demise, but the third.<\/p>\n G\u00e9rard L\u00f3pez during his time at the Ligue 1 club Lille. Photograph: Fran\u00e7ois Lo Presti\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n