Hungary - Portugal (R)

That sounds about right.
Rock and a hard place.

 

Portugal is a very strong team. They only need to heat things up. Personally, I am not happy to see Portugal as Croatian opponent. Ronaldo entered in inspirational moment, Nani is always good with his running abilities with direct intentions, similar to Quaresma.

Their only problem are defenders who are older like Carvalho, Pepe was never reliable as an individual. It's bad if you get three goals from team like Hungary, they don't play well, hard to watch, beside their captain. Others are pretty weak.

Portuguese defenders and goalkeeper are not like Baia, Jorge Costa, Beto, Jorge Andrade, Secretario, Fernando Couto, Vidigal, Abel Xavier, Dimas, Rui Jorge...that's why they have took older defenders, at least because of their good careers and experiences. Porto players used to be reliable defenders. Today we have some mixture of Sporting, Benfica, Porto players. Also Portugal has a lot of athletic players, who came from Portuguese colonies like Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde - which is a huge advantage, because Croatian slower defenders can't compete with much faster players. For example, market value of Renato Sanchez who is only 18 is around 20 millions of euros. I think that Bayern gave much more. William Carvalho 26 millions, Andre Gomes 20 millions, Adrien Silva 15 millions - probably unknown players to wide majority, but Portugal was always the cradle of footballers.

Spain and Portugal have some similarities, but Portuguese players are much more direct, oriented directly for attacking, Spain nurtures constant possession.

Croatia needs to prevent Ronaldo, Quaresma, Nani, Moutinho, Joao Mario. Can Croatian slower defenders prevent these fast ones? I don't think so. Croatian players probable think that they will win, but Croatia has completely negative score with Portugal, three matches, three defeats.

The factor of luck - it depends. Portugal was unlucky with their unused chances, but they are lucky with three points which took them forward.

Croatia had some luck with Spain, but they are unlucky how things ended in the knock out stage. Iceland scored in 94th minute, Austria missed penalty. These facts are all against Croatia and plan that they get easier opponent.

 

Or maybe they are just overhyped and overpriced judging by had bad those players are whenever I see them in a Portuguese shrt.

 

I'm not very happy to be playing Belgium next. As Portugal proved, our defenders are not great individual defenders. We can defend against teams that play more direct and simple football like Iceland and Austria, but we struggle against teams that can counter attack with speed and creativity.

With that said, I must give credit to the fearlessness in the Hungarian team going forward. We scored in all 3 games for 6 goals total without having any individual world class players. There is a surprising confidence in the Hungarian players to try and play out of the back and try to keep some possession. Once we get near the final third, we are very brave and direct and try to attack instead of playing back passes.

For Hungary it's already mission accomplished even if we lose against Belgium. For young people in Hungary they've never seen their country perform well in qualifying and in a major tournament. The experiences over the last 18 months will be an inspiration for young players to pursue football and hopefully more bigger clubs around Europe will give young Hungarian players more chances to get experience.

 

Joao Mario is a great player. He could be the new Rui Costa. Renato Sanchez is not handling this EURO well at all. Bayern bought him and they should have good scouting crew. Andre Gomes plays in Valencia. Hard to say what is true, maybe they are just under impressions. On previous competition, Eder was great. Now he is much weaker. Ricardo Quaresma was weaker in Brazil, now he is returning on some earlier phases of his talent.

Not sure why Fabio Coentrao isn't here, same as Tiago.

Anyway, Portugal can achieve a lot on force & strength with good velocity. In tactical sense, they seem weak, otherwise they wouldn't receive those two goals in short time interval. Coach basically ordered them to stop and play rationally. Otherwise, it would be goal after goal.

I am not impressed with Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Hungary, Slovakia, England, Iceland if we observe the knock out stage only.

But I must say good words about the organization and heart in teams of Northern Ireland, Wales, Slovakia and Iceland. These three teams are squeezing the best what they have.

Teams that I like to watch: Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Spain, France.

Germany, Poland and Belgium could show much more.

 

I expected a lot from Joao Mario, but with the quality he's shown at the Euro I'm pretty sure all his suitors will pass on him now. He looks like a bona fide headless chicken of the Ramires mold.

 

Of course we have good players. Portugal never seems to get the benefit of the doubt, it's amazing.

Blame our coach for a colective minded tactic with an individualistic attacking line and for sticking with a few players that no one wanted to begin with.

Vieirinha is horrid yet he keeps him for the past 3 games.

Moutinho is in a very poor form and pretty much inexistent throughout a match. He's still picked for the XI. He has the role to connect the 2 creative midfielders up top and is just not doing that at all. When Renato Sanches came in it was noticeable how much that changed. João Mário started playing a lot better. Gomes not really, but he wasn't 100% fit and was one of the best players in the previous matches. He seems to be a lot better in the center midfield playing a pivotal role though (just like in Valencia).

João Mário or André Gomes don't have enough intensity to properly defend for an entire match. Well the latter does, but he gets burned out after 70 minutes. Santos need to take one out of the two for a midfielder that isn't mildly passive.

As I mentioned above, the attacking line is not doing its job. Nani and C. Ronaldo don't do enough to support the offensive transition. Their natural attributes are just not fit for this. Nani is not a complete striker although he does reasonably well in the off ball movement inside the goal area. He's bad at receiving the ball from a distance though. We've lost very good plays on the account of that.
While Cristiano Ronaldo...well, his assist was an exception. He rarely build up plays. He's only there for the finishing so he tries to position himself for a good opportunity to arise. That creates a situation in which we have 2 players that might just as well have a free role. It's no coincidence that sometimes long passes are made even from the center of the field since there is no other alternative.

With 2 CFs, they would be tracking back and combine plays either with the midfielders moving up the last third of the field or each other. These 2 though...well...they force midfielders to force their way in. This is why a lot of the times the ball flow through the flanks rather than the middle. Hopefully Adrien or Renato Sanches for Moutinho can amend that to a certain extent. Someone that can do individual plays to cut through the middle and connect the dots.

I think Ricardo Carvalho has been playing alright and it's Pepe that has been more shaky. I don't know why since this is quite unusual of him. Not exactly sure what to say here. By the time we confirm there is an issue with one out of the two it'll be too late, but no one can really put their hands on the fire neither.

The general consensus here is:

- Santos only brought one decent side defender: Raphael Guerreiro.
- Adrien or Renato Sanches should be playing instead of Moutinho.
- André Gomes and JM shouldn´t play together for the sake of our defense and overall intensity in the midfield.
- Rafa should be playing instead of Nani since he has more speed and technique as well as better vision.
- Bringing Éder was a complete waste when FC Porto started fielding a promising CF by the name of André Silva. Bruno Alves...well, he must have a very good agent to keep being called for 4 years in a row. Rúben Semedo, Daniel Carriço, Rúben Vezo and Paulo Oliveira stayed home because...well, no one really knows.
- William is good at organizing from back, but prone to counter attacks. Danilo is more physical, faster and a better ball recover, but is an anchor DM so doesn't add anything to the offensive game. Regardless, I personally believe that against Croatia he is the best option.

Barely anyone in Portugal is expecting us to go through against Croatia. If Santos could see what he is doing wrong then maybe I could have some hope, but he continues to blame it all on bad luck. He can't dismiss his gameplan now but he could at least put the right players on the field based on form and how they connect with each others.

One can only dream...

 

...what are YOU watching?

He's been absolutely appaling. He did recover a bit against Hungary but still too average of a performance for anyone to care. Watch both games against Austria and Iceland. Focus on him only.

The only thing he did appropriately against Austria was clearing the ball over the goal line. Which was pretty great but he was poor the rest of the game.

He's poor at defending and apart from the occasional inside cut that he does quite decently, all of his crosses are piss poor. He can't cross a decent one even if his life was at stake. He adds nothing offensively which I would be ok with if he at least wasn't shaky in positioning. If you think it was because of his error against Iceland that he is getting trashed, then you're not watching the games that myself and thousand others across portuguese forums and newspapers have.

I'm even surprised you're questioning me on this. It's so noticeable that he's been our worst player.

Regardless, our problems are far greater than this. I will be there supporting and hoping that Santos pulls the right strings or Croatia to have a very bad day.

 

Portugal only gets two days rest before R16 match! France has three more days of rest than Ireland!

UEFA needs to either go back to 16 teams or go up to 32, because this 24 team tournament doesn't work.

 

100% agree! He can't defend and he can't put in a decent cross. Why is FS bothering?