●           onze — the gourmet of football was the idea that Amadeu Freitas, Leonor de Almeida, Marta Almeida and I had for an editorial project — both in concept and graphic design — for the Graphic Design Project course in the Graphic Design and Multimedia programme at esad.cr, taught at the time by Professor Luísa Barreto. onze (eleven) was conceived with the ambition of talking about football, and following football culture, the rituals of fans, the idiosyncrasies of this culture in Portugal, but in an elegant, elitist, contemplative, theoretical manner. It was planned as a monthly publication.

●           We decided the magazine had to be lean, seductive, anything but loud, more avant-garde than strictly conservative. It needed a clean, sober, rigorous yet free grid, with plenty of breathing room — something lacking in sports periodicals. It would be intended for more extended reading, with room for philosophical digressions and scientific considerations, without dropping match analyses, statistics, chronicles, and even the tabloidism of the social column. We would add a guide to privileged places to enjoy football culture in Portugal in its most genuine form, in the taverns, and the motto would be, first, to create an alternative to that type of press, experimenting with a potential readership segment. Second, and even more ambitiously, the goal would be to grant the way football is consumed in Portugal — as depicted by our imaginary of taverns and wine stains — the legitimacy of an elite culture, a kind of tropicalism.