#2 Tondela – Primeira Liga, 2015/16
You would be easily forgiven for never having heard of Club Desportivo de Tondela or Tondela in short. Founded in 1933, the Portuguese club played their first ever professional season as recently as 2012-13 and their home ground - The Estadio Joao Cardoso- has a mere 5000 seat capacity.
Tondela gained entry into the top tier of Portuguese football – The Primeira Liga – in 2015-16 by winning the second division title the previous year. They had a horrid start to the campaign, sacking two managers by December and appointing former Portuguese star Petit as the new man in charge. As the season reached its halfway stage, Tondela sat rock bottom with an embarrassing haul of eight points from 17 games.
As late as March, they were 11 points from safety and seemed doomed to be relegated. However, something changed in April and the club collected 17 out of 21 points, even scoring an away win over F.C Porto.
They were still in the bottom two going into the last round of matches where they took on already relegated Academica, trailing Uniao da Madeira by two points. Europa League-chasing Rio Ave did Tondela a huge favour by beating Uniao 2-1 away whereas Petit’s men beat Academica 2-0 to finish the season on 16th place, relegating Uniao.
A similar tale might be on the cards this year as well as Tondela are currently in the relegation zone three points behind Moreirense with two games to play.
