Alert: PORTUGAL 2018 FIFA WORLD CUP FINALS - *GENERAL DISCUSSION*

I feel for future tournaments we need to stop having friendly matches against crappy teams like algeria and tunisia. This gave santos delusion into thinking fonte pepe partnership would work. And that ronaldo guedes uptop was the solution

 

Just as I predicted, Croatia in the finals. And it all had to with timely scoring.

Pks... Blah, blah. I dont care how they got there, experience does matter but that MF looks beastly. France will CHOKE AGAIN?

 

Great post and I agree. Being conservative hurt us, tactically this team didn't look itself. New coach?

Santos dropped the ball in not taking risks... We were poor. I'd try jota as striker, Bruma/Guedes should be the future wingers, and I'd start Cancelo over Cedric. Neves/William are locks in MF, and Carrick IMO should be given a shot FFS!

 

Hell no! I'm rooting for Croatia. Their coach instilled belief, every time I saw him in an interview he preached team work.

 

Same. Croatia deserve to be where they are. If France wins, which I think they will, the second place will haunt Croatia for a while, not to mention they will still not be considered a top team to win anything, despite placing second. Anything but the win is just a statistic, and people will view them making the final as an anomaly, kind of like Greece winning in '04.

It's crazy to think that only 8 nations out of 200+ eligible to enter, have won this title. If Croatia do it on Sunday, they will be the 9th, in the tournament's 80+ year history.

 

I don't know if I would go so far as to say Portugal need a new coach. When Santos became coach of Greece, there was a player revolt. A number of players announced their retirement. So Santos came into difficult circumstances with a really hard act to follow. That said, Santos in his first two years with Greece took risks. He subbed on a 19 year old Fortounis in the opener to Poland at Euro 2012, in what was Fortounis' second ever cap for Greece, and this proved a master stroke. Fortounis is considered a bit of a luxury player and yet Santos subbed him on at time Greece was down to 10 men. Fortounis was up against Poland's right side, which was their strongest flank (featuring Dortmund stars Pieczenik and Blaszczykowski). In Santos' last two years with Greece, he was much more reluctant to take risks and we saw him continue to build our team around a pair of midfielders who were over 35 years of age. Once Santos left Greece, those two players were no longer in contention and this led to disaster for us. We lost twice to Faroes Islands and finished bottom of the easiest qualifying group for Euro 2016. We went from a central midfield with over 200 caps to one with only 10 caps. I thought Santos was a good coach, but it was not right for him to continue with Greece given his failure to replace Karagounis and Katsouranis. He had to go and Ranieri was a better replacement, despite his failure with Greece.

I think Portugal has signs of problems similar to the ones Greece had, but for Portugal it's at the heart of defense, at CB, not the midfield. If Santos keeps sticking to Alves, Fonte, and Pepe, then I'd start to become concerned. No more than one of those, probably Pepe, should be around come Euro 2020. That's the one area of major concern I think Portuguese fans should have because the CB area is looking like a weak point for Portugal. Unless Jardim or Mourinho make themselves available, Santos is probably the best man for the job given his experience and success at the international level. As things stand right now, it would be a mistake to remove him.

 

I was originally on the same boat...but after seeing the classless comments from croatian players after the england match. I now want to see their tears on sunday

 

Thanks for the perspective. Great post

 

England cheated portugal in 1966 with the change of venue.

Also 06 was one of the hardest world cups ever, us winning is not shameful in the slightest. In order for us to have won that we would have had to beat: Netherlands, England (they were good back then, way better then this 2018 team), France with zidane and a stacked italy team. If we pulled that off it would have been the best world cup win of all time in terms of strength of opposion

Portugals team was really good in 2002 its a shame

 

Croatia = Portugal in Euro 2016

 

But I still predict France winning the final. 3-1.

 

Yugoslavia World Cup Champions 2018

 

Yes we possibly would’ve had a better run on the other side but as much Santos made some clutch decisions at the euros and even some at the World Cup eg Quaresma vs Iran, he also fell in to the loyalty Bermuda Triangle in his squad picks which have plagued many tournament champions over the last couple of decades. Also playing players out of position and also a system that doesn’t suit the players we have was his largely Portugal’s undoing.

Goncalo Guedes was in the La Liga team of the year as a left midfielder, his position at Valencia, why in the world would you play central players like B.Fernandes & Joao Mário when you literally have one of the most inform wingers in all of Europe. This would be a hard question to answer honestly

This is just one example but what I will say is that he derserves another crack to atone for his mistakes.

 

Tunisia-W
Panama-W
Belguim-L
Colombia-D
Sweden-W
Croatia-L
Belguim-L

Still Lolgland