Morais's corner: how Sporting won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1964

The kick-off at the Bosuil stadium in Deurne, on the edge of Antwerp, was at 7.30 in the evening of Friday 15 May 1964. Sporting Clube de Portugal and MTK of Budapest were playing the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup for the second time in three days. In Brussels on the Wednesday they had drawn 3–3 after extra time, and the rules of the day said the final had to be replayed.2 sources2 sources

Some twenty minutes in, Sporting won a corner. João Morais, a 29-year-old defender who had played left-back in Brussels, turned to the bench to check that he should take it. The coach nodded. Morais put the ball down by the flag and, as he told it later, spoke to it and kissed it. In another telling he gave it two kisses, and in it went.4 sources4 sources

Nobody scored again. When the Belgian referee, Gérard Versyp, blew the final whistle, Sporting's supporters ran onto the pitch. Pedro Gomes said sixty years later that the players were “swallowed up” by the crowd, and that he left the field in his underpants after giving his shirt to the first fan he met.2 sources2 sources

Portugal in 1963 was a dictatorship, the Estado Novo (New State) of António de Oliveira Salazar. Its army was fighting independence movements in Angola, and from January 1963 in Guinea. The regime tried to put football's heroes to its own use, as the historian Nuno Domingos has shown in the case of Eusébio.2 sources2 sources

In Europe, Portugal's club successes had so far belonged to Benfica, Sporting's neighbour and rival in Lisbon. Benfica won the European Cup, the competition for national champions, in 1961 and 1962, and reached the final again in 1963. Sporting had played in the very first European Cup in 1955, by invitation, and gone out to Partizan Belgrade in the first round. The story of Benfica's second title is told in our article on the Amsterdam final of 1962.3 sources3 sources

Sporting qualified by winning the Portuguese Cup. In the final in Lisbon on 30 June 1963 they beat Vitória de Guimarães 4–0, with a goal from Mascarenhas, a forward born in Angola who had come to Sporting from Barreirense.2 sources2 sources

At home the 1963–64 season went badly. Benfica won the league with 103 goals in 26 games, and Sporting finished third, behind FC Porto. The coach was a Brazilian, Gentil Cardoso, known at home as the “philosopher-coach”; A Bola credits him with first calling football “a little box of surprises”. Hilário, the first-choice left-back, was born in the Mafalala district of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique, the same neighbourhood as Eusébio.5 sources5 sources

Sporting had looked abroad for stars in the summer of 1963. A Bola recalled that attempts to sign Pelé and Garrincha came to nothing; the club's football manager, António Abrantes Mendes, brought a forward called Bé from Brazil instead. Gentil Cardoso nearly dropped his goalkeeper, Joaquim Carvalho, after Sporting conceded six goals to Athletic Bilbao at a tournament in Santander, just before the trip to Bergamo. Some of the players, among them the captain, Hilário, talked him out of it.1 source1 source

The run nearly ended at once. Atalanta beat Sporting 2–0 in Bergamo. Sporting won the return 3–1 at the Estádio José Alvalade, their home since 1956, and the tie went to a play-off at the Sarrià, Espanyol's ground in Barcelona. It was 1–1 after ninety minutes; Lúcio and Mascarenhas scored in extra time. Each Sporting player had been promised a bonus of 20 contos, 20,000 escudos, for getting past the Italians; A Bola reckons that was about five months' wages.3 sources3 sources

The return in Lisbon had turned on an injury. After eight minutes Atalanta's goalkeeper, Pizzaballa, broke his left arm in a collision with Figueiredo, who knocked in the rebound. Substitutes were not yet allowed, so the centre-forward, Calvanese, went in goal for the rest of the match. Atalanta equalised, and Mascarenhas and Bé scored in the second half.1 source1 source

News of the Vajont dam disaster in northern Italy, which killed some 2,000 people that night, reached Alvalade at the end of the game. Before the play-off in Barcelona, Sporting's masseur, Manuel Marques, collected about 2,500 escudos from the players and coaches and asked Atalanta's president to pass it on to the victims.1 source1 source

The second round brought APOEL of Nicosia, who had just beaten Gjøvik-Lyn of Norway 7–0 on aggregate. Both legs were played at Alvalade; according to Portugoal, APOEL accepted Sporting's offer to pay their expenses for a week in Portugal. On 13 November 1963, with the English referee Jim Finney in charge, Sporting won 16–1.3 sources3 sources

Mascarenhas's six goals were, in UEFA's words when he died in 2015, “a record for a UEFA club competition game”. He remembered scoring “in every way possible: with my right foot, my left foot and with my head”. UEFA called the fifteen-goal margin the widest in the competition's history. A Bola, marking the anniversary in 2025, called it the biggest win ever in UEFA's competitions and noted that nobody had matched it since.4 sources4 sources

In the quarter-final Sporting drew Manchester United, with Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and a young George Best. At Old Trafford Law scored a hat-trick and Charlton added another; Osvaldo Silva's goal for Sporting made it 4–1. At the Santander tournament before the first round, Gentil Cardoso had given Osvaldo a dressing-down after a defeat by Lazio; A Bola's reporter found him in tears, and he started the first match in Bergamo on the bench. The return leg against United would be his night.4 sources4 sources

Sporting changed coach between the legs. Gentil Cardoso was suspended, and the team passed to Anselmo Fernández, born in Lisbon in 1918 to Spanish parents from Zamora. He had played for the club as a young man, trained as an architect and helped design the Estádio José Alvalade; Record adds the Hotel Tivoli and the Lisbon faculties of Letters and Law to his buildings. He refused to be paid, for the stadium or for coaching, and he was known for showing his players films of their opponents.3 sources3 sources

On 18 March 1964, at Alvalade, United nearly scored at once: Hilário remembered Denis Law hitting the post within 30 seconds. Instead Osvaldo Silva scored after three minutes, from a penalty, and again after twelve. Géo, Morais and Osvaldo added three more early in the second half, and Sporting won 5–0 and went through 6–4 on aggregate. According to RTP's archive, Matt Busby, United's manager, said afterwards that Sporting would win the cup.5 sources5 sources

The semi-final against Olympique Lyonnais also took three matches. It finished 0–0 in Lyon and 1–1 in Lisbon. UEFA's review points out that under the away-goals rule, which did not yet exist, Sporting would have gone out. Instead the clubs met again in Madrid, and Sporting won 1–0.3 sources3 sources

Their opponents in the final had an even narrower road. MTK of Budapest became the first side from eastern Europe to reach the final. They beat Slavia Sofia and Motor Zwickau by a goal on aggregate, needed a play-off in Rome to get past Fenerbahçe, and then lost 3–0 to Celtic in Glasgow before winning 4–0 at home.2 sources2 sources

Sporting lost a key player days before the final. Their league match against Vitória de Setúbal was brought forward to make room for the trip to Belgium, and Hilário broke his leg in a collision. The club's own account says it was a double fracture of the tibia and fibula, five days before the final, and that “fate summoned Morais”.2 sources2 sources

The final was played on Wednesday 13 May at the Heysel stadium in Brussels, and hardly anyone came. UEFA's match table gives a crowd of 3,208; RSSSF rounds it to 3,000. Without Hilário, Morais played at left-back, and Bé, a forward the club had brought from Brazil, was in the attack.4 sources4 sources

It was a wild game. Károly Sándor put MTK ahead, Mascarenhas equalised before half-time and Ernesto Figueiredo scored early in the second half. MTK then scored twice in a few minutes, through István Kuti and Sándor again, before Figueiredo made it 3–3 with about ten minutes left. Extra time brought no goals.2 sources2 sources

The minutes above are UEFA's. RSSSF gives slightly different times (45, 73, 75 and 80 for the last four goals), which would mean Sporting led 2–1 at half-time rather than 1–1.2 sources2 sources

There were no penalty shoot-outs yet, so the teams went to Antwerp for a replay 48 hours later. Sporting made one change. Bé was injured, José Pérides came into the side and Morais moved forward to the left wing. Figures for the Antwerp crowd vary: UEFA's table gives 13,924 and its text about 14,000, RSSSF has 19,000 and Portugoal about 15,000.4 sources4 sources

The replay was tighter. Pedro Gomes summed up the team's plan as “defend well and attack better”, and chances were rare at both ends. After the corner, Sporting held on for seventy minutes. Morais insisted afterwards that it had not been a lucky goal: he had scored a few more the same way in his career. Portugoal's account adds that he had asked Anselmo Fernández to let him take the corners, because he had noticed where the Hungarian goalkeeper, Ferenc Kovalik, stood.3 sources3 sources

The team flew home with the cup. José Pérides, interviewed for the club's sixtieth-anniversary documentary, said the welcome at the airport was beyond measure, and that he had never seen anything like it since. Pedro Gomes remembered driving to the Sé, Lisbon's cathedral, in an endless line of cars, all sounding their horns, with thousands of people waiting.2 sources2 sources

The players had not forgotten Hilário. As he told Record in 2003, his team-mates brought the trophy to him as soon as they landed, followed by a procession of some 10,000 people, and he had to go to the window to thank them.1 source1 source

Anselmo Fernández did not stay long. He left Alvalade soon afterwards, at odds with a club director who interfered in picking the team, and later coached CUF before a road accident ended his career. He died in Madrid in January 2000, aged 81.1 source1 source

Several of the players went on to the 1966 World Cup in England, where Portugal finished third. The goalkeeper Joaquim Carvalho started the first match, against Hungary. Morais, who won ten caps, played at right-back, and Alexandre Baptista and Hilário were in the squad.3 sources3 sources

Sporting have not won a European trophy in football since. In May 2005 UEFA noted that the club had been waiting 41 years for a second one, on the eve of a UEFA Cup final against CSKA Moscow at Sporting's own stadium. Sporting lost it. In 2024 A Bola still called 1964 the club's only European title in football.3 sources3 sources

The goal outlived its scorer. Morais was born in Cascais, played for Caldas and Torreense, joined Sporting in 1958 and stayed until 1969. He later settled in Vila do Conde, worked for the town council and died on 27 April 2010, aged 75. UEFA's obituary remembered him above all for the corner.2 sources2 sources

The club keeps returning to that week. For the sixtieth anniversary it released a documentary with Pérides, Hilário and Mário Lino, and it has issued a commemorative shirt. Mário Casquilho, a former director of the club's museum, said in the documentary that “we always had hope in Morais”, because he was “an expert taker of corners” (translated from Portuguese).2 sources2 sources