Algarve football is going through a complicated situation. The two senior district divisions merge this year due to the withdrawal of several clubs, many of them due to financial difficulties.
In football there was also a time for fat cows. Clubs with no aspirations to rise in rank paid real salaries to amateur players, with virtually no return – box office revenue in district football is practically non-existent, the number of club members is negligible, and field victories do not fill the coffers either. .
The clubs lived on the support of the local authorities – which are barely able to support themselves – without, often, at the senior levels, any citizen directly benefited from this support: most of the club's players did not live in the municipality where they were based.
There were those who realized this early and changed course in recruiting athletes, turning to the municipality itself. You save more on prizes – because some people play football for their taste – and on trips to training or games. These are the clubs that now have the least difficulty in surviving and that best play the role of promoting sport in their respective communities. Unfortunately there are few.
In 2012/2013, Algarve United will reappear, which contradicts in its genesis as a club everything I wrote above. No matter where the money for your reappearance in district competitions comes from, you should have more than most "survivors". With the extinction of the III Division in 2013/2014, if he manages to form a good team, he risks moving up directly from the District Championship to the II National Division.
It's the last opportunity this club has to show that it can be taken seriously…
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