IberCup in Estoril, Portugal

My youngest son Jude had been invited by the Llevante Academy in Mallorca, to play in a tournament called the IberCup in Estoril, Portugal. | Richie Prior

Richie PriorPalma19/07/2024 15:05
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W henever I visit another country, I always find myself comparing it to Mallorca. At the end of last year, my youngest son Jude had been invited by the Llevante Academy in Mallorca, to play in a tournament called the IberCup in Estoril, Portugal. Llevante Academy is made up of players from around the island who are invited to play in tournaments in different age groups. The IberCup is one of the largest and most International Youth Football Tournaments, teams get a chance to play against the best Football Academies in different locations around the world. Since he was called up, he had training sessions in different parts of the island, once or twice a month. As the tournament was in July, I thought that it might be a struggle to go and watch him, as July is high season for Pirates. But my boss Cathy encouraged me to go, for which I was very grateful. My wife and I decided it would be a good time to getaway for a little rest and relaxation after what has been a fairly stressful year. Both of us had worked in Portugal before, I was a holiday Rep in the Algarve, and she had worked as a dancer in Oporto.

We based ourselves in Estoril, which is just outside the capital city of Lisbon. Most of the games were scheduled to be played in and around that area. The boys flew to Sevilla and then had a 5-hour coach journey from there to Estoril. We took the slightly easier route of flying with Vueling direct to Lisbon. The hotel was called Evolution Calais and Estoril and is situated on the seafront just outside the town of Estoril and the city of Lisbon. A very modern hotel with views out to sea from the higher floor rooms and a rooftop swimming pool. The staff were very attentive and spoke fluent English, and I would definitely recommend to others.

The games were close to the hotel but not close enough to walk, so with the help of my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who had come across from a holiday in Madeira, we discovered Uber. There is no shortage of them in Portugal, unlike Mallorca, and very cheap too. Our journey from the airport to the hotel by taxi cost us €48 and our journey back from the hotel to the airport with Uber was €23.50. I look forward to Mallorca either putting out more taxis or extending the Uber offering. We also used the local bus and train service a couple of times, which were frequent and cheap. That’s slightly different for us as residents in Mallorca, as we get free travel. We took a trip up to a beautiful place called Sintra, but I have to be honest and say there were just too many people to enjoy it, so we cut short our visit. We weren’t made aware of any tourism overcrowding protests, but I could understand in that part if there were some.

We found eating out a lot cheaper than Mallorca. An average cost of a meal with starters, main course and drinks was around €25pp. On our last night, we ate in the marina and discovered the old town, which was a shame as we would have liked to explore that.

The football went very well. Jude’s team were in a group with 3 Portuguese teams and a team from Canada. They drew their first game 0-0 and then won 6-0, 3-1 and 12-0. In the last 16 they played a team from Beirut in Lebanon. A tough game which they eventually won by 1-0. We had planned our stay to leave on the Saturday evening, and we now had the prospect of playing a quarter-final and a possible semi-final on the Saturday afternoon and the final on Sunday morning. Should I change our flights was the conundrum I was dealing with, but that wasn’t easy, so I decided to wait and see what happened first? The quarter-final was against another Spanish team, from Cataluña. Who were a very tough opponent. They were playing a little higher in the mountains and the wind proved to be the deciding factor. They disappointingly lost 1-0 and so were out of the competition. Nevertheless, they’d had a great time and were much the better for the experience. We would have rather seen them qualify, but this did mean that we could catch our original flight.

I thoroughly recommend Portugal as a country, Estoril and its surrounding areas, and we will definitely go back to the Old Town and visit Lisbon next time.