Arrigo Portuguese

Arrigo Portuguese Football Club was a professional football club based in Arrigo, the second city of Candelaria And Marquez and largest on Marquez.

The club was founded by members of the city’s Lusophone community in 1937, though other scholars of the sport dimly recall something about a kindly monk and an outside toilet as part of their origin story as well, and the Hueva quickly became the most significant and only professional team in a city not nearly as inclined towards sport at its northern neighbour El din. The team was a consistent mid-table side during the days of the NFBL, forward Adriano Chaves recognised as one of the stars of the 1960s but the club otherwise achieving little of note.

In the early CMSC they became a yo-yo team and nationally recognised as a magnet for off-field comedy – an endless series of poorly chosen managers, dubious owners, and an ill-fated plastic pitch. At the dawn of the International Era they had recently become bankrolled - as with so much else in Arrigo at the time – by the transport tycoon Eduardo Morales, achieved promotion under Jay Zabojnik, and made a series of competent signings. Portuguese became the first of many Candelariasian clubs to employ Kura-Pellandi company ShinyPlaces to refurbish, or in their case build from scratch, their stadium. The boldly named Estadio Arrigo Nacional became, until the opening of Albrecht Turkish’s Solidarity Stadium, the largest and most impressive in the country.

Steady progress over the following decade saw the club up into the Champions’ Cup positions. By now, several Candelariasian sides had significant Kura-Pellandi connections but Portuguese were arguably the leading exponent, bringing in Matthew Tortini – El Profesor in the eyes of Arrigo supporters, awed by his success on a charity edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? – as manager and basing the team around countrymen including tricky winger Iain Belling and experienced full-back John Horner from Marquez-Onwere. From the other side of Vircais, centre-half Avilass Gackbang became the league’s first Vephrese player and was soon recognised as one of the division’s best defenders. Arguably the true star though was C&M striker Tom Smith, a comparative youngster in a team of veterans by CMSC XXX. Many pundits agreed that this season was a ‘now or never’ one for Tortini’s team and they rose to the occasion for a second-place finish – for no-one could hope to prevent the remarkable Caires City team cobbled together by Elgin Dannat from storming to a most unlikely title.

The seventh Champions’ Cup saw Portuguese reach the semi-finals. Though the club would go on to qualify to participate beyond Candelariasian shores only sporadically, their record was impressive – no CMSC would ultimately register a superior win percentage in UICA competition (56.03%), and only two other clubs, from Cafundéu, across the organisation’s history. Domestically however, consistent mid-table finishes became the order of the day. Tortini gave way to former Kura-Pelland national team boss Oscar Goldsworth, who continued to dip into his nation’s talent pool with exciting young players like William Lacamoire and Harry Oughton but, even in tandem with C&M internationals like big Gabriel Macanás, Big Blues captain Oliver Wilkinson and the mercurial Koviljko Randjelovic, Portuguese never quite made the breakthrough expected. Exciting young players were typically snapped up by clubs with foreign ownership or funding – while extremely rich by Candelariasian standards, Morales just couldn’t compete.

Under future C&M manager Carlos Panadero, Portuguese continued to launder their international reputation with a trio of victories at the Prince’s Shield in Queer Poco el Mono Ara, while his successor Juan Carlos Revault took the club to the final of the 17th Globe Cup in Onwere. Such runs helped attract the attention of a vast Cafundelense consortium, Morales reluctantly agreeing to sell the club to the Associação Universal das Gigantescas Empresas do Comércio Cafundelense. Many predicted that Portuguese would soon join the ranks of the CMSC’s true superclubs, and it may well have ultimately come to pass, but in the short term the new ownership opted to build slowly, basing the team around not-quite full internationals from their homeland and the Candelarias. XXXVIII included an embarrassing 4-2 defeat to Arrigo neighbours Castellano Hills FC in the CMS Cup, and their mediocre form continued into the following season. The arrival of powerhouse Pocoan striker Wayne Ullrich and Sargossa winger José David Gómez just before the World Cup break indicated brighter days to come, but the weeks that followed charted Candelariasian football’s gentle stroll into the sporting night.

The club no longer exists in any meaningful sense, though its stadium is arguably the most well-used of all surviving CMSC1 grounds – its once unloved running track making it the obvious site for national, Marquezian and local competition in the higher levels of amateur athletics. Benbián, the club’s training centre, has returned to its roots and once again become a primary school. No monks, this time, kindly or otherwise.

Notable CMSC1 International Era players
Goalkeepers Defenders
 * Andy Halford
 * William Romero Fernández
 * Ben Royle
 * Ali Al-Fayoomi
 * William Burgos
 * Yannick de Woudt
 * Adam Darby
 * Avilass Gackbang
 * Ruud Horin
 * Ciaran Kelly
 * Anto Parrott
 * Taclik Prarbens
 * Andrés Quirot
 * Teteo
 * Farris Travers
 * Oliver Wilkinson
 * Jon Wilson

Midfielders
 * Israel Álvarez
 * Hugo Anderson
 * Iain Belling
 * José Luis Borrás
 * Jerome Cotton
 * José David Gómez
 * Jamie González
 * Ursula Lauren
 * Miguel Ángel Madrid
 * Harry Oughton
 * Pak Yongho
 * John Pepper
 * Koviljko Randjelovic
 * Matt Reddington
 * Zoran Živkovic

Forwards
 * Amate
 * Kirby Brightmore
 * Djagbor Cvecej
 * Greg Innisvale
 * Richard Johansson
 * William Lacamoire
 * Gabriel Macanás
 * Javier Pérez
 * Ramón
 * Tom Smith
 * Wayne Ullrich