Portugal’s Historic Qualifying Campaign: Breaking Records and Setting High Expectations

Their qualifying campaign: historic

30 points out of 30, an average of 3.6 goals per match, barely two goals conceded in ten matches. With Roberto Martinez at its head, Portugal broke all records during these qualifiers. The former coach of the Red Devils even became the first coach in the history of the Seleção to win all of his first ten matches.

Given the division of France against Greece this Tuesday evening, Portugal is even the only team to have won all its matches in these qualifiers. It also has the best attack and the best defense of all the qualifiers, ahead of France.

Strengths: talent and experience everywhere

Gone are the days when Cristiano Ronaldo was the sole master on board. From now on, the boss is surrounded by an entire armada as strong as him. From Ruben Dias and João Cancelo in defense to Rafael Leão, Gonçalo Ramos, João Felix, Diogo Jota in attack, through Bruno Fernandes, Mattheus Nuñes, Bernardo Silva or Vitinha. And even if CR7 finished second best scorer in the qualifiers (10 goals) behind Romelu Lukaku (14), danger can come from anywhere: eleven different players scored during the qualifiers.

The depth of the squad and the experience of the players are other assets. Roberto Martinez can count on several 2016 European champions (Ronaldo, Danilo, Pepe, Carvalho, João Mario) and on a group almost exclusively of players playing in major European clubs and used to the Champions League. The pool is also very important: Roberto Martinez used 30 different players during the qualifiers.

Future work: confirm against a large

The higher we rise, the harder the fall will be. Very high expectations are placed on this Portuguese selection. But be careful of excess confidence which could play tricks on them when approaching the decisive matches at the Euro. The series of ten victories could already have been different except for a few details. For example, we saw them in difficulty for 45 minutes against… Liechtenstein with a parity score (0-0), or even narrowly escaping in Iceland (0-1) and Slovakia (0-1).

After fairly easy qualifications against very affordable opponents, we are waiting to see them confirm against a bigger nation to know their true level. “We had a spectacular qualifying phase, it is normal that expectations are high, but we have to take the matches one after the other and stay calm,” thinks Vitinha, followed by Ricardo Horta. “At the Euro, only the big teams are present, there will only be very high level matches. This will require splendid preparation on our part to present our best level in order to win the Euro.”

Typical teams ©IPM Graphics

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2023-11-22 16:41:00
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