"The giant has awoken. The history of this institution has long begged for this moment. We rose and arrived at the place that is ours in its own right! We rose because we were better than the rest”. That is how the SC Farense football team, based in Faro, has reacted to the news of their promotion into Portugal’s ‘Primeira Liga’ league, putting them amongst the country’s footie crème-de-la-crème.
This decision was made public this Tuesday, May 5th. The decision was taken by the League of Clubs at a meeting held this morning and has already received a positive reaction from the Algarvian club, which, 18 years later after a fall from grace, is back in the top echelon of Portuguese football.
The 2001–02 season saw the club relegated from Portugal’s equivalent of the Premier League down to the lower tiers of the sport. Since then the club had struggled to reach the success that it had during the 1980s and 1990s, which have been primarily caused by financial problems. Despite living some of its darkest years in recent times, the 2012–13 season saw the Faro side promoted to the Segunda Liga. 18 years later, Farense is back in the national football elite.
The League Board Meeting, which took place this morning, May 5, confirmed the rise of Faro as well as Nacional da Madeira, teams that both occupied the promotion positions of the Pro League at the time of competitive interruption due to the COVID -19 pandemic.
The decision according to a statement from Farense released social networks, crowns the moment as an arrival “to a place that is ours in its own merit”. The team led by Sérgio Vieira ends the season with 48 points, the result of 15 wins and three draws. On the other hand, the Lions of Faro recorded only six defeats. Throughout the season, the Faro team was only out of the climbing places on two days, and was the one who most often occupied the first position.
Still at the end of last season, with a view of reaching a position for promotion, João Rodrigues, president of Farense, and André Geraldes, CEO of SAD, who arrived at the Algarve structure in November 2018 and assumed a leading role in the reformulation of the club in several areas , put their hands to work and provided the squad with conditions to fight for their climb.
In the statement released on their official Facebook page, the Algarve-based team welcomed the moment by recalling that "the history of this institution has long been begging for this moment".
In the past not much has gone well for the club, with plenty of hard moments in which the survival of the club was seriously threatened. The epicentre of this sport reputation earthquake happened with the disqualification of the club in 2005/2006, after several games played with the junior team and three absences due to financial difficulties.
In its statement, the Faro team does not forget this phase and affirms that “decisions of bad memory demanded from this institution an inhuman strength that we now see capitalized on. It is difficult to perceive the greatness of a giant when we see him prostrate on the ground, but we will never forget the merit of all those who gave him a hand ».
The team then appeared the following year in competition in the Second District Division, starting from there, an ascension course, with some ups and downs, which now culminates in a rise highly desired by the adept mass since they were pushed back to the Second League.
