🇵🇹 Boavista could become the next victims of European football’s most prolific club killer

Portuguese champions in 2001, the club now faces relegation to the second tier!

As a metaphor, Boavista failing to keep the lights on appropriately illustrated the plight of a 121-year-old club fighting for survival. And losing.

Rooted to the bottom of the Liga Portugal table, the Porto-based club are used to losing. One more defeat to AVS on Monday would effectively confirm Boavista’s relegation.

It could also confirm the club’s liquidation.

Without top flight football, Boavista say they will be unable to pay back the €140m of debt they owe. The situation has become so desperate that the team was forced to train 30km from its usual base in April due to an unpaid electricity bill.

Boavista were the last club outside Portugal’s ‘Big Three’ to win the title back in 2001, so how has it got to the stage that Os Axadrezados (The Chequered Ones) could vanish from the country’s football landscape?

And who is to blame?