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Unexpected Winners: Porto 2004 Champions League

This is the first Champions League triumph on our unexpected winners series and it would change the face of European and International football for the next 10 years.

Porto’s win in 2004 has been well documented for their considerable underdog status, and what their manager, Jose Mourinho, would go on to do in the next few years.

They came into the competition as the UEFA Cup winners from the previous season but nobody was expecting them to pull up any trees especially after they were drawn in a group with Real Madrid, Marseille and Partizan.

Mourinho’s men eased through the group as runners up to Real Madrid though, only losing one game at home to the Spanish giants. They also did the double over a Marseille team that contained a future Mourinho favourite, Didier Drogba.

They would face a monumental challenge in the round of 16 though, playing Sir Alex Ferguson’s imperious Manchester United team. The first leg was at the Estadio do Dragao in Porto and the home team didn’t disappoint. A brace from Benni McCarthy cancelled out Quinton Fortune’s goal and gave the Portuguese side a one goal advantage for the return leg in Manchester.

The Red Devils dominated the second leg and took the lead through a Paul Scholes header just after the half hour mark. Scholes was then controversially ruled out a second goal which would come back to haunt United. A mistake from Tim Howard in the 90th minute, allowed Costinha to pounce and send Man United crashing out. The goal sparked scenes of jubilation on the bench, and the now iconic image, of the special one running down the Old Trafford touchline to celebrate.

In a very entertaining quarter-final, Porto saw off Lyon beating them 2-0 in the home leg before securing a 2-2 draw in the second leg to go through 4-2 on aggregate. They then faced a very tight semi-final against Deportivo La Coruna. The spoils were shared in the first leg in Portugal with a goalless draw and the sides could only be separated by a Derlei penalty in Spain to send Porto through 1-0 on aggregate.

The Portuguese side had previously won the competition in 1987 and would face AS Monaco in the 2004 final. The French side had won their group and seen off Lokomotiv Moscow, Real Madrid and Chelsea on their way to the final under the management of one Didier Deschamps.

The final itself though was a one-sided affair. Porto were runaway 3-0 winners, getting goals from Carlos Alberto, Deco and Dmitri Alenichev to secure the club’s second European Cup.

By the end of the summer though, the core of the Porto team would be demolished. Mourinho left for Chelsea a week after the final and took Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Carvalho with him to West London. Deco would get a big move to Barcelona and Pedro Mendes departed for Tottenham. The following year Nuno Valente left for Everton and Costinha joined Dynamo Moscow with Jose Bosingwa eventually leaving for Chelsea a little later as well.

Patrice Evra, Fernando Morientes and Emmanuel Adebayor all went on to have successful playing careers after Monaco and of course Didier Deschamps would manage France to World Cup glory in 2018.

As we said, this final changed the face of European and International football.

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