Benfica FC: Europe’s Last Imperial Machine, Now Trading on the NYSE of Broken Dreams
Lisbon, Portugal – On paper, Benfica is merely a football club—113 years old, 83 major trophies, a seagull-shit-coated stadium squatting on the edge of the Tagus. In practice, it is one of the last functioning imperial machines still headquartered in Europe, a late-capitalist relic that exports talent the way Britain once exported missionaries and smallpox….