A club with four months of existence, with delayed salaries, with minors at risk and without equipment. This is Villa Athletic Club, the youngest team in the Portalegre Football Association, based in Ponte de Sor.
The club has well-known people in its ranks. The squad includes Edinho, a former Portuguese international with spells at Vitória de Setúbal, SC Braga and Académica in the I Liga, and André Carvalhas, who trained at Benfica and made a career in the II Liga. The coach is also a familiar face and the one who makes the complaint: Albert Meyong, a former Cameroonian international and striker with a career in the highest category of Portuguese football.
The founder and president of the club are also known, but from other stages. Fábio Lopes, better known as “Conguito”, is a radio and television presenter.
The project, says Meyong TSF, it was good, given the ambitions and conditions that it had. “Everything was fine,” says the former striker, who reveals that he came to the club through a “very trustworthy” friend.
The goal was to play in Ponte de Sor, in the Portalegre district, and train in Samora Correia, in the Santarém district. So about a hundred kilometers and an hour and a half away.
“I asked how they were going to finance it and they told me that they had several sponsors and the company,” reveals the technician.
However, there was no company supporting the club: “When I saw that it was difficult to pay the salary, I began to feel that there was a problem. We scored a friendly in Fatima, they said there was no money for transportation. I asked: ‘To go from here to Fatima’?”
There was none for the trip, nor for the salary. “They said, ‘The team will have a budget.’ And, in the signings we made, we did not exceed that budget, ”says the former international. Neither he nor the rest of the technical team were paid for any of the four months of work.
Despite being “tricked”, they decided to go to the match. Not the first, because it was not possible, but the second. If the team missed two games, “it would be suspended.”
“We went to the game without having trained. We haven’t trained for two weeks. We don’t have a team or anything. Samora Correia is the one who lent them their equipment”, he explains.
Of the 20 players, only 12 were able to participate, since they were the only ones registered. Meyong himself watched the match from the bench, because he was missing the same inscription.
But the worst is off the field: “We have children who are foreigners. They are in a house that the club rented, but now they don’t pay. And there are still some minors inside. If the owner of the house kicks the children out…” .
They are helped by Meyong himself and the rest of the technical team who give them money to eat.
Meyong doesn’t talk to the president. The sports director, Pedro Campos Ribeiro, acts as an intermediary between the two, but not even that takes away from the coach the idea of solving the situation: “I’m trying to solve the problems. Nothing solves”.
Although the hope is not high, Meyong wants to try to solve the problems until the next match and even going to court is a possible way.
Finally, the coach leaves a question for Fábio Lopes: “He works there on the radio. If they don’t pay him, do you know how he’s going to live?”
The Ponte de Sor City Council has already announced that it has revoked the transfer of the municipal stadium to the Villa Atlhetic Club.
THE TSF tried to contact the athletic director to find out how many kids there are, where they are and what is being done to support them, but to no avail. Fábio Lopes was also the object of an attempt by the TSFbut the result was the same.
Source: TSF
