FERNANDO PEYROTEO
Sporting, 1937-1949
Who is the greatest Portuguese footballer of all time? Outside of Portugal, most people would assume that the honour is a straight toss-up between Eusebio and Cristiano Ronaldo. Yet in Portugal, a third name is often mooted – not Luis Figo, but striker Fernando Peyroteo, who is the all-time top scorer in the Portuguese league with 332 goals. Even more extraordinarily, he scored those goals in just 197 matches.
Peyroteo might never have been discovered had his mum not been poorly. In March 1918, when Fernando was born into a family of white settlers in Angola, the Portuguese colony could barely be seen on the football map. Peyroteo was playing for Sporting Luanda, loosely affiliated with Sporting Lisbon, before moving north to the Portuguese capital in 1937 because of his mother’s deteriorating health. A friend suggested he should join Sporting. Ignoring a more attractive offer from Porto, Peyroteo signed for the Lions and he found his place in a legendary forward line known poetically as the Five Violins, alongside Albano, Jesus Correia, Jose Travassos and Manuel Vasques.
Muscular, broad, burly and hairy, Peyroteo looked more like a rugby player than a goal machine – but his game was not all about power. The little footage that survives often shows him jinking past defenders or beating them for sheer pace. He could score with both feet and had enough game intelligence to know when to play deeper and orchestrate play like a No.10. He was the principal violinist in Sporting’s golden era and also led the forward line for his country, scoring 15 Portugal goals in an international career that was affected by the Second World War.
Peyroteo took no time at all to settle in at Sporting, scoring a hat-trick in his first training match and two on his debut, aged 19, against Benfica. The publication Stadium commented that, “With great physique, good pace and a fine shot, Peyroteo did not show any signs of pressure on his debut.” In his first season, 1937-38, Peyroteo netted 57 goals in 30 matches to finish the campaign as the league’s top scorer – as he would in five of the following 10 seasons. And in a remarkable 1946-47 season, he netted 47 goals in just 23 games as Sporting strolled to the Primeira Liga title, scoring 123 times in a 26-match season.
Peyroteo won five league titles as well as five cups at Sporting, and scored 544 goals in all competitions, yet such glory had not made him rich. When he began in 1937, he was paid the equivalent of £3 per month. He retired in 1949 aged just 31, in debt from running his own sports shop and physically exhausted: “I am a soldier and a soldier does not run from his duties,” he said, “but I feel like an old soldier that cannot help the club the way that he should.”
Peyroteo later managed Portugal, briefly, with one of his final decisions selecting a 19-year-old Eusebio to make a scoring debut against Luxembourg in 1961.