A German coach causes a sensation in Portugal – and not only there. Since Roger Schmidt took over the post at Benfica Lisbon, things have been looking up for the club. Schmidt, previously at PSV Eindhoven and at Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the Bundesliga, among others, plays aggressive, fast-paced, transitional football that inspires fans and experts alike.
And with outstanding success: Benfica leads the table in the Portuguese league, no team has scored more goals and conceded less. The Águias (“eagles”) also caused a stir on the international stage. In the Champions League, Benfica won all the preliminary round matches – including against Schmidt’s former club Bayer Leverkusen – and also swept away FC Bruges in the round of 16 with a total of seven goals.
The 2-0 defeat in the first leg of the quarter-finals against Inter Milan does not fit into the picture, in the second leg Benfica urgently need to react and score at least three goals to still reach the semi-finals. There is more at stake for the club than advancing a round – Benfica are also playing against a decades-old curse.
The story goes back to 1962 and one of Roger Schmidt’s most prominent predecessors. Béla Guttmann had won the European Cup with Benfica in 1961 and 1962, the predecessor of today’s Champions League. On top of that, fans paid him homage for making the Portuguese football legend Eusébio big. But Guttmann’s tenure at Benfica from 1959 to 1962 did not end well.
As so often in the coaching business, great successes were followed by a break. Club and coach broke up in strife immediately after winning the national champion cup for the second time – it was about allegedly promised bonuses that Guttmann was not paid. The coach was so embittered that he cursed his club: Benfica Lisbon should not win a European title for a hundred years.
Already in the first year after Guttmann’s departure, the curse – known today as the “Guttmann curse” – showed its effect for the first time. Benfica made it into the Champions Cup final for the third straight season, but this time they lost to AC Milan. And so it went on and on: In fact, Benfica Lisbon hasn’t won an international title since 1962. The club has been in a European Cup final eight times (five times in the European Cup, once in the UEFA Cup and most recently twice in the Europa League). But all finals were lost.
The Scarlet Reds, as the club is also known in Portugal, tried everything to avert the ban. When Benfica reached the 1990 European Cup final again in Vienna, the city where Guttmann, who died in 1981, is buried, Eúsebio even paid a special visit to his former coach’s grave to ask him to lift the curse. But even the best Benfica player of all time was unsuccessful with this request: The next day the team lost 0-1 to defending champions AC Milan.
In 2014, a bronze statue was built for Guttmann at the Estádio da Luz to appease him. But the curse continued, Benfica lost the Europa League final against Sevilla. It was the last final for the time being that the club reached. The hope of breaking Béla Guttmann’s curse before the end of the hundred years has been completely given up, but not. Roger Schmidt should make a decisive contribution to this – the German coach has just extended his contract until 2026.
Sources: “World” / “11 Friends”
