From the Pitch to the Page: Who Gets to Belong?

The question now is whether the next generation can break the cycle.

In Portugal, history is often told as harmony. The colonial past gets framed as an adventure, lusotropicalism still lingers in textbooks, and racial violence is either silenced or foreignized. The country insists, again and again, that it is not like the others. Not like America. Not like France. Not like its own past.

But if you follow the thread—from Eusébio to the murdered body of Odair Moniz—you begin to see the pattern more clearly: Portugal doesn’t know how to love its Black citizens. It knows how to admire them, consume them, mythologize them—but not how to truly see them.

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira arrived from colonial Mozambique in the early 1960s and became the most dazzling footballer Portugal had ever known. His brilliance lit up stadiums, his goals propelled the national team to international glory, and his humble beginnings helped construct a national myth: the poor African boy who became a Portuguese hero. He was nicknamed "The Black Panther" and celebrated as a symbol of post-imperial integration.

But even at the height of his fame, Eusébio's Blackness was managed, framed, and ultimately defanged. His story was stripped of the colonial context that brought him to Lisbon. His stardom was used to polish Portugal’s image abroad, while back home, the country continued its colonial wars in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and his own Mozambique. He became a statue before he was even buried—immortalized in bronze, yet erased as a man. His story offered a comfortable fiction: that Portugal could be colorblind, so long as talent stayed grateful.

Fast forward to today, and the stories are heartbreakingly familiar.

In early 2025, Portugal’s under-17 national team dazzled on the pitch. But their victories were soon overshadowed by a cascade of racist attacks on social media. Instead of praise, these young Black athletes were mocked for not looking “Portuguese enough.” Their names, their skin, their presence were all called into question. Though born in Portugal, they were treated as foreigners—conditionally accepted when winning, and rejected when merely existing.

Shortly after, 12-year-old Francisco Borges was interviewed by national media. His story was remarkable: a boy from a modest family, with no smartphone and a broken foot, who read ten books a day. He was articulate, curious, and passionate about literature. The segment should have been uplifting. Instead, it was met with vitriol. Commenters accused him of lying. Some mocked his appearance. Others made insinuations about his motives. To many, a Black child who reads was too much—too intelligent, too articulate, too visible.

But perhaps the most brutal expression of Portugal’s institutional racism came on the night of October 21, 2024, in Amadora. Odair Moreno Moniz, a Cape Verdean man, was shot and killed by PSP police officers during what authorities claimed was a confrontation. According to the official version, he had threatened them with a knife. But leaked footage told another story: one officer is seen placing a knife-like object near Odair’s lifeless body. Another casually slips two of his bags into his own pocket. There was no knife. No threat. Just a dead Black man and an attempted cover-up.

Only after public pressure and video evidence did the authorities act. The officer was charged with homicide. But one cannot help but wonder: had the camera not been rolling, would the truth have surfaced? Would Odair’s name be just another statistic—another body erased by official narrative?

None of these stories are isolated. Together, they form a portrait of a country that hasn’t reckoned with the racial logic still embedded in its institutions. The police, the media, the public school system, and even the language used to describe national belonging—all continue to operate under the assumption that Black Portuguese are somehow still guests. Welcome, perhaps. Useful, definitely. But never quite at home.

This is how institutional racism survives: not always through overt violence, but through daily denials of humanity. Through the skepticism that greets a boy with a book. Through the “jokes” that follow a national team to victory. Through the false narratives crafted to explain a police shooting. These are not glitches in the system—they are the system functioning as designed.

And yet, amid the bleak repetition, there is a flicker of possibility.

If Portugal wants to change, the work must begin not with monuments or slogans, but in the classroom. Education has the power to interrupt the cycle. A child who learns the full history of colonialism, who sees Black poets and thinkers in their curriculum, who is taught to recognize bias in media and power in language, grows up with different instincts. The next generation can learn to cheer for a Black player without disclaimers, to admire a young reader without suspicion, to recognize when the state lies—and demand that it tells the truth.

Racism is learned. So is justice. If the past decades were shaped by silence, the future can be shaped by knowledge, empathy, and truth.

Portugal is not innocent. But it is not beyond redemption. The violence is old, but the future is still unwritten. And if we listen—truly listen—to the stories of those we tried not to see, then perhaps the next Eusébio won’t need to be a symbol. He’ll be allowed to be a person.