The Estádio do Dragão opens, and a 16-year-old Messi comes off the bench

On the evening of Sunday 16 November 2003 the illusionist Luís de Matos came down by helicopter onto the grass of the Estádio do Dragão, in front of about 50,000 people, and FC Porto's new home was open. It was very cold and windy, the architect Manuel Salgado remembered.1 source1 source

UEFA's president, Lennart Johansson, was in the stands. FC Porto's president, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, regretted aloud that the prime minister, José Manuel Durão Barroso, was not. Barcelona, the guests of honour, had come to play the inaugural friendly.2 sources2 sources

José Mourinho's Porto won 2–0. Derlei scored the stadium's first goal from a penalty after 55 minutes. The new turf was still poor, he said later: he slipped as he struck the ball and the goalkeeper got a hand to it, but it went in. Hugo Almeida added the second on 68 minutes. Fifteen years on, Derlei summed it up: “It was a penalty, and against Barcelona” (translated from Portuguese).3 sources3 sources

With about a quarter of an hour left, Frank Rijkaard, Barcelona's coach, sent on a 16-year-old from the club's youth teams in place of the defender Fernando Navarro. Rijkaard had brought several of his under-19 players to Portugal. The boy wore number 14, because it was the shirt to hand. His name was Lionel Messi.3 sources3 sources

He nearly scored: a few minutes after he came on, Porto's goalkeeper Nuno denied him a goal. Barcelona lost anyway. For Porto the night was about the new building. The European Championship it had been built for was seven months away.2 sources2 sources

On the morning of 12 October 1999, in a hotel in the German town of Aachen, UEFA's president Lennart Johansson announced that Portugal would host the European Championship of 2004. The country promised ten stadiums, a number UEFA had not required.1 source1 source

Four of the ten belonged to clubs. Benfica's new Estádio da Luz and Sporting's Alvalade XXI went up in Lisbon, and in Porto the Dragão replaced FC Porto's Antas while Boavista rebuilt the Bessa. The other six belonged to town halls: new or rebuilt municipal stadiums in Braga, Guimarães, Aveiro, Coimbra and Leiria, and the Estádio Algarve, owned jointly by Faro and Loulé.3 sources3 sources

Counts of how many were new differ. Observador says six of the ten were built for the event; When Saturday Comes wrote in 2012 that nine were built from scratch.2 sources2 sources

Some people warned early. In May 2003 the English football magazine When Saturday Comes predicted that only the three big-club stadiums would be regularly full after the tournament. Aveiro, Coimbra and Leiria would each host two group games, it noted, and their clubs would then draw perhaps 5,000 fans. The Algarve ground, it added, would probably have no top-flight team at all.1 source1 source

Salgado's stadium was built to replace FC Porto's old ground, the Estádio das Antas, and the building was not smooth. Disputes between Pinto da Costa and the mayor of Porto, Rui Rio, stopped work several times and delayed it.2 sources2 sources

Names were floated: Estádio das Antas, Novo Estádio das Antas, even Estádio Pinto da Costa. The president turned down his own name and chose the dragon from the club's crest. As late as May 2003 When Saturday Comes was still calling the new ground the Antas, and expected it to stage the opening match and a semi-final.2 sources2 sources

A Bola puts the Dragão's total cost at €125 million; we found no audited figure. Because it was a private project, the Tribunal de Contas's May 2004 audit did not examine its costs. It did record what the state gave: €18.1 million towards the stadium and its car parks, and €20.4 million towards the access roads. In October 2014 FC Porto's football company took over half of the stadium company, EuroAntas, and with it millions in debt.3 sources3 sources

The ground filled up from the start. UEFA counted 52,004 spectators at the opening match and in 2011 still called it the stadium's record. A Bola's figures for the twentieth anniversary give the record instead as 50,818, at a goalless Champions League semi-final against Deportivo La Coruña in 2004, the season Mourinho's Porto won the competition. In July 2006 the Rolling Stones played there to 47,000 people.3 sources3 sources

Accounts differ by a few minutes on when Messi came on. FC Barcelona's English-language history gives the 71st minute; Diário de Notícias and A Bola give the 74th. Both goals had already been scored, so the score did not change while he was on the pitch.3 sources3 sources

His age is not in dispute: 16 years, four months and 23 days, or 16 years and 145 days, as Diário de Notícias put it. Barcelona count the Porto match as his debut for the first team, though it was a friendly and so not an official fixture.3 sources3 sources

The man he replaced had his own career. Fernando Navarro went on to win the Spanish league with Barcelona in 2004–05, the European Championship with Spain in 2008, and two Europa Leagues with Sevilla, for whom he faced Messi several times.1 source1 source

In May 2004, a month before the tournament, the Tribunal de Contas published a consolidated report on the six municipal stadiums. It found that the reference costs used to calculate state aid had been far too low. Put together, the six stadiums were expected to cost €291 million against a reference total of €140 million, an increase of 108 per cent.1 source1 source

Braga's stadium stood out: about €84 million, 180 per cent over its reference cost and some €2,800 a seat. Guimarães, at €867 a seat, was the cheapest. The auditors also noted that Leiria's ground, a rebuild of an existing stadium, had cost more overall and per seat than the stadiums built from scratch in the Algarve and Aveiro.1 source1 source

Because the state's 25 per cent was calculated on the low reference costs, it covered on average only 13 per cent of what the six stadiums actually cost. The councils borrowed most of the rest. Bank loans paid for almost 75 per cent of the six projects, public grants for about 20 per cent and the councils' own money for about 5 per cent. In Coimbra, Euro 2004 loans made up 81 per cent of the city's total debt; in Braga, 78 per cent.1 source1 source

The court added up everything the public purse would carry, from central government grants to the councils' investments and the present value of 20 years of loan charges, and arrived at more than €600 million at 2004 prices. That total left out the cost of maintaining the grounds, which it could not yet estimate.1 source1 source

Other totals depend on what is counted. In 2005 the head of Portugal 2004, the state company that oversaw the works, put the state's final contribution to the ten stadiums at €103.5 million, RTP reported, within a total investment in Euro 2004 infrastructure of €964.4 million, of which €496.2 million was borrowed from banks. The court's final report put the access-road contracts at about €148 million, 13.3 per cent more than first contracted.2 sources2 sources

Ten years after the tournament, the sports paper Record put spending on the stadiums at about €650 million and the whole investment at more than €1 billion.1 source1 source

Euro 2004 began at the Dragão on 12 June 2004, and it began badly for the hosts. Greece, coached by the German Otto Rehhagel, scored through Giorgos Karagounis after seven minutes and through an Angelos Basinas penalty early in the second half. Cristiano Ronaldo headed in a Luís Figo corner in stoppage time. About 50,000 people watched Greece win 2–1.2 sources2 sources

“This is the biggest win of any Greek team ever,” Rehhagel said that night. There was more to come. Portugal, coached by Luiz Felipe Scolari, recovered and reached the final; so did Greece.2 sources2 sources

The final was played at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon on 4 July 2004, before 62,865 people, by UEFA's count. In the 57th minute Angelos Charisteas headed in a corner, and Greece won 1–0. Twenty-two years later A Bola still called it one of the greatest disappointments of the Portuguese people.2 sources2 sources

Once the visitors had gone home, the 2003 prediction looked accurate. By 2012 When Saturday Comes reported that Guimarães and Braga could fill only about half their 30,000 seats, that Braga's 44 per cent occupancy the previous season was the best of any municipal ground, and that Leiria's was under ten per cent. Boavista, crippled by the cost of the rebuilt Bessa, had dropped to the third tier.1 source1 source

Aveiro's stadium hosted two Euro 2004 matches. By 2012 it cost the council about €650,000 a year to maintain and €2.5 million a year in bank repayments, and the council voted to hand its management to the local club, Beira-Mar, in exchange for permission to build training pitches beside it. At a conference in 2013 the Coimbra economist Francisco Pinheiro argued that it would be cheaper to knock it down than to keep paying for its upkeep.2 sources2 sources

The stadium was not demolished. Observador found in 2023 that Aveiro's spending on it, counting running costs, investment and loan repayments, had stayed under €3 million a year between 2020 and 2022, peaking at €1.84 million in 2020.1 source1 source

Leiria fared worst. União de Leiria, paying €17,500 a match to use the stadium, left in 2011 and moved its home games to Marinha Grande. In October that year the council tried to sell the stadium at auction with a reserve price of €63 million, and nobody bid. In 2014 the councillor Gonçalo Lopes called it “an expensive and badly planned stadium” (translated from Portuguese).3 sources3 sources

Ten years on, Lopes was mayor. In 2024 he told Lusa that the city had been left “traumatised by the volume of investment” (translated from Portuguese), which had held back other projects for 20 to 30 years. About €10 million was still owed, to be paid by 2028, with debt payments of around €800,000 a year and maintenance of about €300,000. Demolition and sale were off the table. Since 2021 the stadium has hosted the final stages of the League Cup.1 source1 source

The Estádio Algarve, on the boundary between Faro and Loulé, hosted three Euro 2004 matches. Pinheiro noted that it had no local club to use it, and put its cost to the two councils at €2.1 million a year in loans and maintenance; When Saturday Comes had put it at €3 million a year in 2012. In 2014 Faro's mayor, Rogério Bacalhau, said a region of about 450,000 people “does not have the size for a facility of that kind” (translated from Portuguese).4 sources4 sources

A decade later the same mayor told a different story. In 2024 Bacalhau said Faro and Loulé had just paid the last instalment of the construction loans. The stadium reported a profit of €142,207 in 2023, and Bacalhau said it hosted 150 to 200 events a year. Portugal's national team had played 19 matches there without losing, including a 9–0 win over Luxembourg in September 2023, and Gibraltar plays its home internationals there.1 source1 source

The stadiums are still in use, and several are still being paid for. In 2012 When Saturday Comes estimated that the six councils needed about €20 million a year between them for maintenance and loan payments. Coimbra's council was paying €1.8 million a year in loan repayments on a stadium that cost €53 million, though its mayor later called it a profitable, self-sustaining investment.2 sources2 sources

Claims about the cost still circulate. In 2023 a viral post said the Aveiro and Leiria stadiums had cost €90 million each and €8 million a year between them in loans and upkeep; Observador rated it wrong, using the Tribunal de Contas's figures and the councils' own accounts.1 source1 source

The audit's lesson was about how the deals were written. The state capped its own share, set no limit on what councils could borrow, and based its aid on costs that turned out to be less than half the real ones. Leiria's mayor said in 2024 that the council now thinks twice before any large project.2 sources2 sources

The Dragão never lacked a tenant. It hosted matches in the final stages of the 2018–19 Nations League and the 2020–21 Champions League final, and by its twentieth birthday, in November 2023, more than 15.6 million spectators had been through its gates.1 source1 source