According to his own information, Belenenses has 14 players and a number of people from the staff in the covid quarantine and could only put nine players on the pitch in the home match against Benfica.
Two of them were goalkeepers, one of whom was allowed to act as an outside player, Portuguese media state.
"Lost all color"
However, the match was not canceled by the association and the whole thing became more of a farce than a fight.
After ten minutes, the great team Benfica had scored three goals and at half time it was 0-7 on the scoreboard.
After the break, only seven of the home players came out for play, two refused to continue the match, and three minutes into the half, goalkeeper João Monteiro went with alleged injury from the field from his midfield position - whereupon the referee was forced to blow off the event.
Several of Belenense's players who could not show up protested on Twitter where they wrote, among other things, that "football has today lost all color".
"We should all be ashamed"
Nor did Benfica think the match should have been played.
- I regret with all my heart what happened today.
Benfica just followed the rules, in the same way that Belenenses was forced to do.
If they did not play, they would still lose the match.
We should all be ashamed of what happened, but it is not Benfica who is responsible for this stain of shame, says club chairman Rui Costa according to Correio da Manhã.
The Portuguese federation claims according to the newspaper that Belenenses did not make a formal request that the match be postponed, but club chairman Rui Pedro Soares says that they announced this on Saturday and received the answer that the team had to line up, otherwise they would lose on walk over and be punished with point deductions.