Five most popular sports in Portugal

Sports refer to competitive mental or physical activities that trail a specific set of playing rules. They may be physical or mind games. As one would seek for entertainment from the Prince of Wales Theatre , the same way he or she would from sports no matter his or her age. It is recommended that in order for one to keep mentally and physically fit, he or she should get engaged in at least one sport. According to a research, children who get involved in sports when they are still very young turn into strong and healthy adults.

Portugal has various sports activities, and below are the top five most popular Portuguese sports.

Football
Football (aka Soccer in the U.S.) takes the top spot on the list of the most popular Portuguese sports. A good number of talented football players from Portugal are known worldwide. Some of these players include: Cristiano Ronaldo , Nani, Deco, Simão Sabrosa, Ricardo Quaresma and great players now retired including the international player Luis Figo and striker Eusébio , nicknamed the Black Panther for scoring predatory goals, who is known to be FIFA World Cup top scorer of the 1966 tournament with a sum of nine goals. Portugal has also got remarkable football managers like José Mourinho, Carlos Queiroz, André Villas-Boas, Manuel José, Jorge Jesus, Jesualdo Ferreira, Domingos Paciência, Leonardo Jardim and others. Portugal performs very well in a number of competitions and has managed to win a number of trophies.

Futsal
Futsal is one of the major sports leagues in Portugal. It is divided into different divisions with the top teams playing in the premier professional futsal league or 1ª Divisão. A team from each division plays the rest of the other teams once away and once at home. The final phase in the 1ª Divisão is played using the playoff system. Teams from Portugal compete in home organized tournaments and those which are organized in the rest of Europe. The team which wins the Portuguese cup plays the winners of the first division in the Portuguese Super cup.
photo credit: Santacreu

Rink hockey
Portugal has got a very successful team of rink hockey (hóquei em patins in Portuguese). The national roller hockey team has managed to win 20 European titles and 15 world titles. This puts it on the top as the country with the greatest number of wins in the two competitions. In the European championships history, the most successful rink hockey clubs from Portugal include: F.C. Porto, S.L. Benfica , Sporting Clube de Portugal and Óquei de Barcelos.
photo credit: Alexandre López Conesa

Basketball
The Portuguese basketball league (Liga Portuguesa de basquetebol ) is the top basketball league for the men in Portugal. Between the 1965-66 and 1973-74 seasons, the champions of the league were determined by a competition between the Campeonato Metropolitano winners as Portugal’s representatives and the champions of Mozambique and Angola (Portugal’s then colonies). But, the first kind of these tournaments wasn’t played because of the protest by the Sporting de Lourenço Marques, the Mozambican team. The teams in the basekball league with the most victories in championships are S.L. Benfica , F.C. Porto, Sporting Clube de Portugal and Carnide.

HandBall
The Portuguese premier professional handball league in Portugal is the Liga Portuguesa de Andebol (LPA) and it consists of 12 teams. This league is a closed competition which only accepts new teams by application. This implies that there is no relegation or promotion between the Divisão de Elite, the second tier league.

The regular presence of the Portuguese handball in the major international competitions attracts more public and leads to a growing audience, particularly in the ever increasing television broadcasts.

Tagged as: life in portugal, popular sports in Portugal