Sports fans are by nature a superstitious lot and are no strangers to their clubs being “cursed.”
So in the annals of great sporting hoodoos, Portuguese football club Benfica has a way to go.
The Portuguese club was arguably the better side over the 120 minutes of Wednesday’s Europa League final, but ultimately lost 4-2 to Sevilla on penalties after the match ended goalless.
It is the second successive year that Benfica players have had to console themselves with runner-up medals, after losing to Chelsea in the final of the same competition last season.
Benfica coach Jorge Jesus and several of the players laughed off talk of the infamous curse in the build-up to the final, but it has now been 52 years since coach Bela Guttman stormed out and the club has failed in every single one of its subsequent European title clashes.
Guttman had just led Benfica to back-to-back European Cup victories in 1961 and 1962, but left the club under a cloud after asking for a raise.
On leaving he allegedly cursed the club, declaring “not in a hundred years from now will Benfica ever be European champion.”
And so far it hasn’t.
It has lost to AC Milan (twice), Inter Milan, Manchester United and PSV Eindhoven in the European Cup and Anderlecht, Chelsea and now Benfica in the Europa League or UEFA Cup as it was formerly known.
The last European Cup final it was involved in was held in Vienna, where Guttman is buried, and legend Eusebio even went to the grave of his former manager to pray for the curse to be lifted.
It had little effect and Benfica remains jinxed.
Jesus bullishly said in the pre-match press conference that he didn’t believe in any sort of hoodoo, adding, “most of the players don’t even know about these statistics. It’s folklore.”
Benfica fans will be consoling themselves that there is only 48 years to go.
