Cerveja. I was drinking a pint and repeating that word in my head, trying to learn the correct way to order a beer in Portuguese (it is pronounced serveysha, incidentally.) Naturally, the perfect setting for this was The Shakespeare pub in Heathrow Airport Terminal 2. I was whiling the time away waiting for my fellow travelers to arrive and doing my best to learn at least a meagre amount of Portuguese.

Before long, the rest of the group had arrived and we were en route to Porto, my first trip to Portugal. We checked into our hotel and went off to test out the waters. We found a quiet, out of the way little watering hole and sat about the business of celebrating our arrival. Before long, the locals had figured out we were Ukrainian supporters and then the party leapt into full swing. A Porto FC supporter showing me all his favourite players on the team poster on the wall. The young girl, asking me questions about Ukraine. One young lad who could speak English very well acting as interpreter for all the group. It was a lovely evening, our hosts fetching taxis and giving us a superb bottle of port as a parting gift.

A tiled church in central Oporto

Porto is a wonderful old city. My lasting memory of the city itself will be the beautiful ceramic tiles that cover the exterior walls of buildings all over the city. These walls depict scenes from the Passion, the old empire all the way down to food at a delicatessen. They are a wonder to behold both for their size and beauty.

We spent the Friday getting the essentials out of the way, picking up our match tickets and doing some shopping, and later sampled the nightlife on the riverside. Some watched the Under-21 match on television. It was being played over 50 kilometers outside the city and we had no effective means of getting there, so contented ourselves with an evening out in town. As it turned out, the U21 was effectively a preview of what was to come.

Saturday morning our hotel room phone rang. On the other end was an official from the Ukrainian delegation to the match, finally calling us about our anticipated meeting. Arrangements were quickly finalised and we got ourselves out to their hotel. We met with three members of the delegation and had a useful discussion about improving communication between ourselves and those in Ukraine about sporting matters, football in particular. We came up with a number of items to move forward with and came out of it with a bit of a warm fuzzy. How many other countries' officials would take an hour out of their matchday to sit down with supporters?

A street scene in beautiful Oporto

By six P.M., we'd collected ourselves in the hotel bar and began making our way to the stadium. With 27 of us, it was a nightmare at the taxi stand making sure all the cabbies knew where we wanted to go! And it was quite the sight sitting in the last taxi, watching the parade of taxis career though the dark evening streets. We were dropped off about half a mile from the stadium so we could parade into the ground, which we did in style. Since it was too early to go into the stadium however, we found a bar and piled in. The beer was flowing, the homemade wine was guzzled by (literally) the bowlful, the locals sharing a laugh. But it wasn't all fun and games. A couple of hard youngsters came in and looked at us to see what we were up to. The bar staff looked a little worried and the old boys told us not to talk to them. Eventually they lightened up and later they admitted to one of our group that they thought we might be a group looking for a fight, that they had been scouting us out. These soccer troubles are thankfully too organised these days. Besides, none of our group were in for any of it. We were there to have fun and to cheer on the team.

A frantic man in a track suit burst in. He'd spied us from his bus, noticed us from the television in Belfast and was eager for us to come to the bus to sing with him. Yes, the Ukrainians had arrived! Unfortunately, the bulk of them didn't seem to share his enthusiasm. It seemed most of them had come for a pokhoron, not for a football match. Suits and ties, overcoats?

Partying with the locals before the match

My biggest complaint to the Portuguese FA: Why no match programmes?! Arrgghh!!

We piled into the stadium and as we stepped out onto the concourse, the Portuguese supporters began whistling in numbers. Barbed wire topped fences separating the end-zone terraces from the side-line seats and surrounded the entire pitch. The seats nearly empty, the terraces nearly full. We set about getting our flags draped across the seats, but flagpoles of any description were confiscated, so there was not much to be done about waving them. The teams came out of the tunnel and faced the opposite stand.

My second biggest complaint to the Portuguese FA: Why was there no announcement of the anthem? By the time the sound from the lightweight loudspeakers drifted over, we realised the tape was halfway through the anthem. We began singing along, but it was too fast and the Portuguese anthem began mere seconds later, forcing us to stop. It was almost embarrassing.

The teams kicked off and it didn't look good at all. I knew it was going to be a long night when I saw only one lone attacker past the midfield line. Victor Leonenko was out (he's just had a run-out after injury with Dynamo-2) and for some strange reason, rather than replacing him with another forward, they opted for simple all-out defense. They didn't even *try* and get any forward possession. Only twice in the first half do I recall Ukraine having possession of the ball in Portuguese territory and only one of those led to a meek shot for Baia to handle. Every time the Ukrainian defense got possession, they would either throw it away or lose it passively in the midfield. It was terrible.

Ukrainian squad warms up in the Estadio das Antas

The Portuguese on the other hand were moving it about with confident control and but for Suslov and their own poor finishing, could have run away with the match well before halftime. But somehow Ukraine managed to survive it all and with the score still 0-0 at halftime, one got the feeling that they might come out a bit more aggressively in the second half and maybe pinch another result like they did in Belfast...

It was not to be. The second half began exactly the way the first had done. Portugal controlling the ball, Ukraine defending exclusively. The winner came from a set play. The free kick was taken, a half-decent cross in towards the top of the area. Maximov reacted late and made a poor choice of trying to head the ball away instead of trying to use his decidedly long legs. At any rate, he missed the ball completely and it ended up at Couto's feet. He set and quickly turned and struck. My first thought was that it would hit the bar, it was rising and Suslov was running to block. But it skimmed just under the bar and settled at the back of the net. The Portuguese went mad. Plenty of time though to snatch an equaliser though, had the Ukrainians wanted. Sabo was clearly upset, repeatedly stepping up to the touchline to shout at the lads. But outside of a few brief sorties into attack, the Portuguese half of the field was more or less forbidden territory.

Portuguese fans celebrate their victory

It was a terrible match, one of the worst I've seen. Not just because of the result, but because of the way Ukraine played, no imagination, almost afraid. I think they gave Portugal too much respect. Or perhaps they simply thought they could defend for 90 minutes without conceding? Or perhaps they thought it wouldn't matter to drop this match, that they could afford it in the long run? I was deeply disappointed in the performance. At the end, as we sang along some encouragement, the boys came over and applauded the support. They looked tired and beaten, their heads hung low. This was not the same side I'd seen in Northern Ireland or on TV from Kyiv against this same opposition. They looked terrible and one must wonder what is going on with Sabo.

Afterwards we came back to the hotel and sat up until the wee hours of the morning. It began pouring rain and thank heavens the weather held out as there was no cover in the stadium! We flew home Sunday afternoon. We hadn't won but Germany's failure once again to defeat Northern Ireland has left us in better shape than we might otherwise have been. The Portuguese papers made no bones about what the win had meant to them. "Alive!" read the headline in one, "Finally!" another. Four points from four matches would have left the Portuguese in a dire predicament and put Ukraine firmly in the drivers seat.

Now the group has been thrown wide open.

The table after round three...

Onwards to Kyiv...

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