As revealed first-hand in last week’s edition of The Portugal News, football’s world governing body FIFA has carried through on its threat to suspend Portuguese teams from international competitions, though giving national authorities until next Thursday as a deadline to get their act together before the suspension order will take effect.

Portugal is days away from being expelled from international football.

At the centre of this Calcio-like debacle, is the demotion Gil Vicente football club to the Second Division, and its subsequent decision to challenge the decision by the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) with civil courts – a cardinal sin according to FIFA statutes – in an attempt to have the demotion overturned.

Gil Vicente were relegated last season after it was found that they fielded Angolan international Mateus without having him registered.

Benfica, Leixões, Belenenses and Gil Vicente all had their matches postponed last weekend in the ensuing battle, with Vítoria Setúbal set the miss out next Monday, when they should be facing either Gil Vicente, Belenenses or even Leixões, who argue they should be playing in the First Division as opposed to Belenenses, having finished third in the Second Division.

Lisbon club Belenenses, and one of only five teams to have won the Portuguese league, were relegated last season after losing to Gil Vicente in the closing fixture of the season.

Following the FPF’s ruling to demote the ‘Gilistas’, Belenenses, having finished 16th in the 18 team league, were promoted back to top-flight football.

But the situation could still suffer yet another reversal of fortune with the matter now in the courts, which is where the problems for Portuguese football start.

FIFA regulations state any action lodged by a team with a civil court equates to a contravention of regulations about governments not meddling in a country’s sporting affairs.

In a statement published on the FPF website, it states that “If the situation created by Gil Vicente is not resolved by September 14, FIFA will ask its emergency committee to suspend the FPF from international competition.”

The FPF had received a letter from FIFA last Friday stating its concern over the situation which, it said, compromises the integrity of competitive football and that it will have no choice but to ban Portuguese teams should the issue not be resolved by next Thursday.

In that event, Portugal’s participation in the Euro 2008 qualifiers will most certianly be jeopardised, while FC Porto, Benfica and Sporting stand to lose millions of euros (estimates point to at least €18m) in revenue should it be suspended from the Champions League, while Sporting Braga, Vítoria Setúbal and Nacional will also be rueing lost cash should they be kicked out the UEFA Cup.

In the meantime, the FPF is also looking to solve the matter through litigation, and is claiming that Gil Vicente’s case should be thrown out of court in order to “safeguard the best interests of the public”.

The Barcelos club’s lawyers have already countered this argument, saying, “Matters of public interest are health and education, not football”.

As the ‘Mateus Case’ lingers, and with the Portuguese Football League (LPFP), apparently quietly in favour of Gil Vicente, many heads could still roll as football chief look to exact revenge on each other for this embarrassing fracas.

Press reports this week said that following the FIFA-FPF emergency talks, FIFA apparently recommended that the LPFP be made redundant, while its chairman seems to have become a police target once more.

Outspoken president of the LPFP Valentim Loureiro has been detained on a couple of occasions since 2004 on charges ranging from match-fixing to corruption in his capacity as mayor of Gondomar, though he has been cleared of all charges so far.

However, in an article published on Wednesday by the Diário de Notícias, Valentim Loureiro, and his son João (who is chairman of Boavista), were accused of handpicking the referees to officiate matches involving Oporto club Boavista during the 2003/04 season in exchange for professional improvement.

The newspaper bases their allegations on taped conversations in the possession of police detectives who have been investigating match-fixing charges in Portuguese football for the past three years, but whose efforts have yet to result in any convictions.