Gil Vicente F.C.

Gil Vicente Futebol Clube (), commonly known as Gil Vicente, founded in 1924, is a Portuguese football club that plays in Barcelos. It competes in the Primeira Liga, the top division of football in the country, and it is named after the Portuguese playwright of the same name. The best season for the team was in 1999–2000, when it finished fifth in the league.
History.
Gil Vicente Futebol Clube was founded on 3 May 1924, after the creation of other clubs in Barcelos, such as Barcelos Sporting Club and União Football Club Barcelense. The idea to found a new club came from a group of friends that every afternoon played football near the city's theater, named "Gil Vicente", after the Portuguese playwright. The initial name for the team was Gil Vicente Football Barcelense.
The team first got promoted to the top Portuguese division, then called First Division in 1990. In 1997, it got relegated to the Liga de Honra and came back two years later by winning it. The best position was in the first year back in the Liga, when it finished fifth, led by manager Álvaro Magalhães, a former Benfica player.
In the 2005–06 Primeira Liga, Gil Vicente fielded an ineligible player being Angolan forward Mateus in the "Mateus Affair". They therefore lost the right to participate in the 2006-07 Primeira Liga, and Belenenses were allowed to stay up. Gil Vicente were accused by the special sports instances that rule Portuguese football of illegally resorting to regular courts on the dispute of Mateus, according to Gil Vicente, illegal contract with his former employer, FC Lixa.
Still convinced this is not a sports-related case but rather work-related, Gil Vicente continued in the courts. Along with the relegation, they were also suspended from the Taça de Portugal for one season.
On 29 May 2011, the club returned to the top flight as champions of the 2010–11 Liga de Honra with a 3–1 home win over C.D. Fátima in front of a club record crowd; manager Paulo Alves beat C.D. Feirense on goal difference to the title, and the key players were strikers Hugo Vieira and Zé Luís. The club finished as runners-up of the 2011–12 Taça da Liga, eliminating Sporting CP from the groups, S.C. Braga on penalties in the semi-final and losing 2–1 to S.L. Benfica in the final in Coimbra.
A four-year spell in the top flight ended in 2014–15, when Gil Vicente lost 2–1 at F.C. Penafiel in the penultimate round of matches. On 29 April 2018, the club slipped into the third tier for the first time since 1971, but had a place in the 2019–20 Primeira Liga secured as a result of the appeal against the "Matheus Affair".
Stadium.
The first struggles of the young team were mainly about finding a pitch to play. Back then, the team would play in the Campo da Estação, which belonged to another club, Triunfo Sport Club. On 3 May 1933, Gil Vicente played in its first field, Campo da Granja, with a capacity for 5,012 spectators, and later renamed Adelino Ribeiro Novo which is now the youth academy stadium, after a Gil Vicente goalkeeper who died there during a match on 16 September 1946.
Gil Vicente played in the Estádio Adelino Ribeiro Novo until the 2003–04 season. From 2004–05 on, the team plays in the new Estádio Cidade de Barcelos, with the former being used for the youth teams. The new stadium, with a capacity of 14,000, belongs to the municipality and received two UEFA Under-21 European Championship 2006 matches: Serbia and Montenegro 0–1 Germany and Portugal 0–2 Serbia and Montenegro .