I've been trying to write this post for a few days now and I keep deleting it and starting again, because I'm not sure I have the words to properly explain what this season was. So let me just start with the facts and we'll go from there.
This was my first season playing Masters handball. Up until last year, I was still playing in the senior ranks. Stepping into the Masters category felt like a transition — a slowing down, maybe, a shift into the more relaxed, more social side of the sport. I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be a way to keep playing the game I love without the same intensity.
I was wrong about the relaxed part. Because this season turned into one of the most competitive, most demanding, and ultimately most rewarding years of my entire handball life. My team, FC Porto Vintage, went out and won everything. And I mean everything. The regional title. The European Masters Championship. The national veterans title. A clean sweep. A treble that I still can't quite believe happened.
Let me take you through it, because every single trophy has a story.
The Regional: 20 games, 20 wins, untouchable
We'll start with the regional championship, because it set the tone for the entire year.
Twenty games. Twenty wins. A perfect record from start to finish. We didn't just win the league — we dominated it in a way that doesn't really happen at this level. We finished as both the best attack AND the best defence in the competition, which is the handball equivalent of being the strongest and the smartest kid in the class at the same time. You don't usually get both. We got both.
The final was against Associação Académica de São Mamede, and we won 31-16. A fifteen-goal margin in a regional final. That's not a game, that's a statement. By the end of that match it had stopped being a contest and become a demonstration of everything we'd built over those twenty games — the chemistry, the discipline, the sheer relentlessness of a team that simply refused to lose.
Twenty from twenty. Best attack, best defence. Regional champions. And we were just getting started.
The European Masters Championship in Setúbal: beating world and Olympic champions
This is the one. This is the section where I have to keep reminding myself that what I'm describing actually happened to me and my teammates.
The European Masters Championship was held in Setúbal, and we went through it with a 100% record. Not a single loss in the entire tournament. Let me walk through the run because every game mattered.
The group stage started against CB Maristas Ademur, who we beat 21-7. Then BM Veteranos Valladolid, dispatched 24-3 — a scoreline that almost feels rude to write down. And we closed the group against Boa Hora, winning 21-8. Three games, three comfortable wins, and we hadn't even hit the knockouts yet.
In the quarter-finals we faced CDC S. Paio de Oleiros and won 22-8. In the semi-final, FIF, and we came through 18-7. Solid, controlled, professional performances. But all of it — every game up to that point — was building towards the final. And the final is where this story becomes something I'll be telling for the rest of my life.
The final was a rematch against CPB Rennes. The same Rennes we'd lost to in the previous edition's final — by a single goal. One goal. That kind of defeat stays with you. It sits in the back of your mind for an entire year. And here we were, given the chance to face them again, on home soil, with the trophy on the line.
But here's the part that still makes my head spin. The Rennes team didn't just have good players. They had LEGENDS. Actual, certified, history-making legends of world handball. Lining up against us were William Accambray and Xavier Barachet — both three-time WORLD champions with France, and both three-time Olympic champions. Three world titles. Three Olympic gold medals. EACH. And as if that wasn't enough, they also had Igor Anić, a world champion and European champion with France.
I want you to understand what that means. We — a Masters team from Porto, a group of guys who play for the love of the game — walked onto a court to face men who have stood on the top step of the Olympic podium. Men who have lifted the World Championship trophy. Multiple times. These are the names you watch on television, the players you grew up admiring, the ones who define the absolute pinnacle of the sport.
And we beat them. 22-17.
We avenged the one-goal heartbreak from the year before, and we did it against a team featuring some of the greatest handball players who have ever lived. I don't think the magnitude of it fully landed until the final whistle, when it suddenly hit me all at once. We're European Masters champions. And we did it by beating Olympic and World champions in the final.
Some days I still don't believe it. But the scoreline says 22-17, and the scoreline doesn't lie.
The National Veterans Championship in Albufeira: reclaiming the crown
After all of that, you might think we'd be running on empty. We weren't. There was still a national title to chase.
We'd finished first in the group stage of the regional championship, which qualified us for the national veterans final phase, held in Albufeira. And we arrived there with one goal: bring the national title back home.
The quarter-final was against C Vela Tavira, and we won 31-18. In the semi-final we faced Andebol C Sines and came through 34-17 — another emphatic, high-scoring performance that showed we still had plenty left in the tank.
And then the final. The final was against Belenenses, and there was real weight to this one. Belenenses were the team we'd beaten in the final the previous year, so there was history there already. And to reach this final, they'd knocked out ABC — the reigning national champions — in their own quarter-final. So Belenenses arrived as a team that had already toppled the title-holders and were hungry for revenge against us.
It didn't matter. We won 33-24 and reclaimed the national champions title. A nine-goal margin in a national final, against a team that had just eliminated the defending champions. We didn't just win — we made a statement about who the best veterans team in the country actually was.
National champions. Again. The crown was back where it belonged.
What this season meant to me
Let me step back from the scorelines for a second, because the numbers — as ridiculous as they are — don't fully capture what this year was.
This was my first season in Masters. I came up from the senior ranks expecting a gentler, more social version of the sport, and instead I found myself part of a team that won a regional title with a perfect record, conquered Europe by beating Olympic and World champions, and reclaimed a national crown. The treble. All three trophies. In my first year in this category.
There's something special about handball at this level that I didn't fully appreciate until I lived it. We're not professionals. We have jobs, families, responsibilities. We train around our lives, not the other way around. And yet the commitment, the chemistry, the will to win — it's every bit as fierce as anything I experienced in the senior game. Maybe fiercer, because we're doing it purely for the love of it. Nobody's getting paid. Nobody's chasing a contract. We're out there because we can't imagine not being out there.
Wearing the FC Porto Vintage shirt this season, alongside this group of guys, achieving what we achieved — it's something I'll carry with me forever. The 20-0 regional record. The night in Setúbal when we beat a team of legends. The day in Albufeira when we took back the national title. Three trophies, one season, and a first year in Masters that I could never have scripted.
I don't know if we'll ever match this. Seasons like this don't come around often — maybe once in a lifetime, if you're lucky. But we'll go again next year, and we'll defend what we've built, and we'll chase it all over again. Because that's what this team does.
For now, though, I'm just going to sit with it for a while. Regional champions. European champions. National champions. My first season in Masters.
What a year to be FC Porto Vintage.