The football should have been the story. FC Porto beat Alverca 2-0, moved to the top of the table with one point’s worth of early-season company, and yet the conversation on Tuesday morning was still about the referee. That is the reality of this argument now: every whistle is treated like evidence in a trial that never seems to end.
In Dragões Diário, FC Porto went after the criticism again after the opening-round win in the I Liga 2026/27. The club’s message was blunt: the two penalties awarded by Luís Godinho in the Estádio do Dragão were correctly given, the analysis in the three sports newspapers agreed, and the idea that Porto are being helped by officials is, in the club’s words, “nothing more false”.
That is not just a defence of one match. It is a direct rebuttal to an entire narrative. Porto pointed out that Benfica were the team in the 10 main championships that benefited from the most penalties last season, with 26, while Sporting had 15. In other words, Porto are not merely saying they were right against Alverca. They are saying the bigger picture is being distorted by people eager to paint them as the favoured side.
And there is a reason the club chose this moment to sharpen the tone. This is not an isolated grievance. In the fifth round of the I Liga 2025/26, Porto said they were denied two penalties against Nacional. Now, after the first round of the new campaign, they are saying Luís Godinho ignored two spot-kick incidents again before VAR intervened both times and forced the referee from the Associação de Futebol de Évora to point to the spot.
The uncomfortable truth is that Porto have found a winning line and a grievance at the same time
That is what makes this such a combustible story. FC Porto are not complaining from the back of a loss. They won 2-0. They are leading alongside Gil Vicente, Arouca and Marítimo after the opening round. Benfica and Sporting both opened with draws and sit behind them on one point. So Porto are in the strongest possible position to talk, and perhaps that is why they are talking so loudly.
The wording of the club’s statement matters. “A triumph without blemish,” they called it. “Desperation,” they said of those still trying to build the opposite narrative. This is classic early-season trench warfare: every side insisting the numbers prove their innocence, every camp certain the refereeing debate says more about everyone else than it does about them.
But Porto have at least made one thing clear. They are not interested in softening the edges of this dispute. They believe the facts support them, they believe the VAR corrected the mistakes on this occasion, and they believe the noise around the club is being fed by something more than a single evening’s officiating.
And that is exactly why the argument is not going away. If the first round of the I Liga 2026/27 is already producing this kind of back-and-forth, then the next phase of the season is not just about points. It is about who controls the story when the whistle blows — and Porto have no intention of letting anybody else write it for them.
