'Postigol' spot-on at last

14 April 2012

When Helder Postiga stepped up to take a do-or-die penalty in the shoot-out against England last week, millions of hearts almost gave out here in Portugal. If he missed, they were out of Euro 2004. "I could see what he was going to do," a Portuguese colleague told me while sadly not letting David James know. "And it made me just want to hit him."

Yes, so what about after Postiga had converted that cheeky little dinked spot kick, allowing it to dribble over the line just to the left of centre of the goal with James scrambling around on his knees? "Well, I still wanted to hit him," said the journalist who comes out in a sweat even now just thinking about it.

By now, though, everyone here just wants to hug him. Postiga's nervelessly lunatic penalty, not to mention being the man who took the reins from the despondent Luis Figo and saved the day for his country with that late equaliser in normal time, has made him an instant hero here again.

A crazy kid, yes, but a hero. A new advert for hamburgers adorns the newspapers, showing him eating chips above a caption which reads "Well done, Helder. The potatoes always taste better after you have eaten the beef." Everyone here just chuckles about the idea that a bloke who has been seen as such a flop in English football with Spurs should have got his revenge against the 'roast beefs' with such elan.

Even in the official guidebook for the Portugal team, their No23 is introduced under the banner "Unhappy in England, but a natural born goalscorer" before the author predicts: "He hasn't been happy in his Tottenham experience but he will probably arrive in Euro 2004 with a good fighting spirit." Spot on.

You see, they believe in Postiga implicitly. If he has been a failure in England, they say, it's because he was a small-town boy who hadn't really grown up and wasn't quite ready for the culture shock of London and the English game at 21. If he'd gone a year or two later, as his old Porto mentor Jose Mourinho had advised, he would have been okay.

Of course, there are some at Spurs who just can't buy that. Postiga, they say, isn't strong enough or committed enough and so why would next season be any different? They'll back this up with the damning statistic which reads price £6.25million, 24 games, two goals, price per goal £3.1m. His technical excellence would offer him a little more breathing space in Spain or Portugal, but his game is simply not cut out for the Premiership rough and tumble.

Here, though, they advise you not to write him off, not just because of his talent but his character too. Postiga grew up in Caxinas, an impoverished fishing village near Porto. The son of a fisherman, Postiga once said that he too would always have a place in his father's boat if he didn't make it in football.

"You need to be tough to take small boats out on to a ferocious sea," said Monica Santos, a football journalist with O Jogo newspaper. "So it's not such a great surprise to us that Postiga was so brave with that penalty because he's from a place which breeds people with strong hearts."

Folk from Caxinas keep themselves to themselves. To his compatriots, Postiga comes across as a shy, almost reluctant star whose mouth only really ever came to life on the football field when he was haranguing refs. Indeed, the hosts' press corps spent a day trying to get hold of him on his mobile phone after his heroics against England to no avail.

Yet they sense the rising of a mature idol, not the kid who once famously got sent off at Porto for arguing with an official seconds after coming on as a sub. "That penalty. It really showed what a star he is. To do something like that when you are 21 - and it's not the first time he has done it - is achieved by very few," mused Jorge Costa, Porto's Champions League-winning captain who once played alongside him. "I'm 32 and it would never have entered my head to do something like that. He knows he has quality and is a class act and to score a goal and then that penalty against England where his first experience has not been a happy one was the best thing that could happen to him."

Could it be the making of him? Deco may be 'the sorcerer' but even he admits that he wouldn't have dared pull a penalty trick like the one the apprentice tried. "I know him well and he's a striker with wonderful qualities," said the man who supplied most of the bullets when Postiga helped shoot Porto to a UEFA Cup triumph the season before last. "I think he's going to prove himself one of the best strikers in Europe over the next two or three years."

What, at Tottenham? Frank Arnesen and Jacques Santini are shrewd enough to give the lad another fresh trial at Spurs and if he still looks a flop, the talk here is that Porto would snap up their local hero again like a shot.

It will be our loss, they say, if we don't get the best from the man they still know as Postigol.

'Postigol' spot-on at last

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