Estrela da Amadora

Nani came home in 2024, at the tail end of a career that had taken him through Manchester United and the Portugal national side, back to the club that first put a ball at his feet. Abola's photographers found the reception waiting for him in Amadora; the return closed a loop that had opened decades earlier, when Rui Costa left the same academy for Sporting and Nené spent a single season here, 1966-67, before Benfica turned him into one of the finest scorers in that club's history.

The name on the badge has not always meant the same club. Clube de Futebol Estrela da Amadora was formed on 22 January 1932 and lasted until 2011, when a Portuguese court declared it insolvent and it ceased to exist. Supporters regrouped the following year under Clube Desportivo Estrela, initially without a senior football side; that came back in 2018. In July 2020, a merger with Club Sintra Football produced the entity that plays today, Club Football Estrela da Amadora SAD.

The old club's high point was the Taça de Portugal, won in 1989/90, a side that also finished runners-up to FC Porto in that year's Supertaça and, the following season, reached the second round of the Cup Winners' Cup before losing to RFC Liège. Dimas Teixeira started his professional career out of that Cup-winning squad. The rebuilt club has its own marker: winning the promotion play-off in Liga Portugal 2 in 2022/23, a route back to the top flight the old Estrela managed only twice, with seventh-place finishes in 1993/94 and 1997/98.

Matches against CF Os Belenenses carry the old tension, Lisbon's Belém district against Amadora, though no fixture name has ever stuck to it. The club still plays at the Estádio José Gomes, in white shirts that earned the players their nickname, Tricolores, but a first Primeira Liga trophy has eluded both versions of Estrela da Amadora.