FPF Council rejects Salvador’s appeal, upholds 23-day suspension and €4,970 fine

After Braga’s 2-1 home defeat to Gil Vicente, António Salvador went to the refereeing team’s dressing room and criticised referee Gustavo Correia, according to reports cited in the disciplinary case. The exchange took place away from the pitch after the match had ended, with Salvador addressing the official whose decisions had become the subject of Braga’s frustration. This private visit, now central to a formal case, has left the club’s president facing a punishment that his appeal sought to overturn.

The FPF Disciplinary Council has rejected Salvador’s appeal, leaving both sanctions intact: a 23-day suspension and a €4,970 fine. In practical terms, the appeal has brought him no relief: he remains suspended as Braga president, and the club must manage its league campaign while he serves the ban. The decision does not change Braga’s results or resolve the wider dispute over the reports; it confirms the original punishment and leaves the club to handle its immediate commitments without Salvador carrying out his presidential duties.

Record reported that the sanctions were imposed through summary proceedings the week before the appeal was rejected. On 23 October, Salvador called the punishment unjust and illegal and said he would appeal.

Braga’s objections to two decisions in the 2-1 home defeat came before Salvador’s reported exchange with Correia. The club said there had been a foul on Pau Víctor before Gil Vicente scored their opening goal, and that a penalty should have been awarded for a foul on Ricardo Horta in stoppage time, reports from the match say.

Those decisions framed the frustration Salvador took to the officials’ room after the final whistle. The disciplinary report says his request to enter was accepted. It also records that he did not go in alone: Vítor Ferreira, the Liga delegate, and Jaime Teixeira, Braga’s first-team football department director, accompanied him.

The presence of both men matters because the case drew on accounts from the referee and the delegate. The report describes an authorised visit with club and league representatives alongside Salvador, rather than an unannounced approach. It was in that setting, after Braga had protested the two decisions, that Salvador spoke to Correia.

The disciplinary reports turned on what Salvador was said to have told Correia in the officials’ room. O Jogo, Record and other outlets reporting the case attributed to him a demand that the referee leave the profession, an accusation that he falsified documents, and a claim that he was psychologically unfit to officiate. The reports treated those remarks as more than criticism of the two decisions Braga had challenged.

Please do us a favour, leave refereeing; you falsify documents. You are psychologically in no condition whatsoever to referee any matches. This is the state Portuguese refereeing is in.

Record reported that the accusation about falsified documents referred to an episode involving Correia and Benfica sporting director Mário Branco during the previous season. That context was also reported, not a finding that the alleged document falsification had occurred. The distinction matters: the disciplinary case concerned the words attributed to Salvador and their effect on Correia’s honour and reputation, rather than proof of the accusation itself. The appeal’s rejection leaves that reported exchange at the centre of the sanction, with the disputed account still resting on the reports cited in the case.

Braga were ninth after nine league matches, with 11 points. Their record stood at three wins, two draws and four defeats: they had lost one more game than they had won.

The table offers a narrow but useful measure of the club’s position while the suspension remains in force. Their goal tally was also slightly in deficit: nine scored and 11 conceded.

The disciplinary case concerned alleged injury to Gustavo Correia’s honour and reputation, as well as calumnious denunciation, according to the case material. Salvador’s objection was that the account on which it rested left out context and formed part of a wider effort to curb Braga’s criticism of refereeing leadership.

The report, incomplete and partial, is an obvious sign that the stance Sporting Clube de Braga has taken in denouncing the refereeing leadership is uncomfortable and is to be fought.

In his statement, Salvador pointed to an internal assessment that a penalty not awarded against Sporting had been a correct decision. He also cited the appointment for Braga’s next match of a referee whose error, he said, had cost the club two points in an earlier game. These were his reasons for seeing the reports as part of a pattern; the disciplinary decision leaves his account contested by the reports on which the case was based.

A separate Portuguese case shows how much turns on the words used. In November 2025, the Tribunal Arbitral do Desporto overturned Sporting president Frederico Varandas’s 51-day suspension and €8,568 fine over comments about referee Tiago Martins. The tribunal said criticism of a specific decision was not defamatory or gross, and therefore did not meet the threshold for punishment. That ruling did not decide Salvador’s case, but it provides a contrasting test for distinguishing criticism from conduct that can be sanctioned.

Elsewhere, football authorities have chosen different penalties. France’s LFP favoured substantial fines over suspensions for club officials; Lille president Olivier Létang received a €20,000 fine after his conduct following a draw with Paris Saint-Germain. SAFE, France’s elite referees’ union, called the fine too lenient, saying it showed disrespect to referees. Spain’s federation took a different route in May, giving FC Andorra co-owner Gerard Piqué a two-month ban over conduct the disciplinary committee said damaged sporting dignity and decorum. The cases show no shared European scale for punishing officials.

After Braga’s defeat, Salvador went through the officials’ dressing-room door to speak to Gustavo Correia. The next date on the calendar is 1 November, when Braga are scheduled to host Famalicão. The ruling has moved the dispute beyond that room: now the practical test is how the club manages its immediate commitments while its president serves the suspension.

• 1 November: Braga’s home match against Famalicão.
• During the 23-day suspension: how Braga manages its presidential duties.