Soccer Nostalgia: The Soccernostalgia Interview-Part 52- A video Interview and blog presentation with Portuguese Author and Journalist Mr. Miguel Lourenço Pereira, discussing the life and career of former Portugal star Fernando Chalana)

Sunday, March 12, 2023

The Soccernostalgia Interview-Part 52- A video Interview and blog presentation with Portuguese Author and Journalist Mr. Miguel Lourenço Pereira, discussing the life and career of former Portugal star Fernando Chalana)

When Fernando Chalana passed away this last year, my memories went back to the summer of 1984, when I first became aware of the talented Portuguese star with long hair and thick moustache.

To discuss his life we have to start from the beginning. Fernando Albino de Sousa Chalana was born in Barreiro on February 10, 1959. He joined Barreirense as a 14-year-old. It would take only a year before the Lisbon giants Benfica would be aware of the brilliant left winger.

He would make his debut as a teenager in a side that was no longer a giant on the European level. This was particularly a bleak time for Portuguese Football, who just a decade earlier dreamed of glory under Eusebio.

The talented Chalana would be capped in 1976 when he was only 17 and would win the Portuguese League on multiple occasions with Benfica (1976, 1977, 1983 and 1984).

Perhaps, most observers took notice of him in 1983 with Benfica’s run in the UEFA Cup that they lost in the Final to a strong Anderlecht side.

But it would be in the following year, during the 1984 Euros that the world witnessed his brilliance as he shone in a side that reached the semifinals of the Euros, losing only to the great of France and Michel Platini.

It would not be long that he would be prized away from Benfica. The world also got to know his wife, his love as well as his agent, Anabela.

In the end French Champions Bordeaux got their man. But this turned out to be the beginning of his troubles. He spent three injury ridden years. He was virtually a forgotten man when he returned to Benfica in 1987. He did win another League title (1989), but he rarely featured at his second spell at the club. He left in 1990 and finished the last two years of his career with Belenenses (1990/91) and Estrela Amadora (1991/92).

He never got his chance at proper management, apart from Assistant or brief caretaker positions and only was head manager in one spell at a Division 2B Lisbon side Oriental (2004/05).

It is an injustice that the world only got a glimpse of his talent one summer in 1984. His career was basically over at the age of 25.

Fernando Chalana passed away on August 10^th, 2022, aged 63, an injustice indeed.