No. You have to put it into perspective. Portugal is an easy team to dislike and if wasn't portuguese I would probably also dislike them. It's just at the end of the day, because of the hatred and bias we get over looked. Poland could have won today. Portugal just have a certain fight to them I haven't seen before or at least in a long time.
Poland Despite Portugal not pressing, and just sitting deep and compact, they made a lot of unforced mistakes playing out from the back. However, in the final third, their combination play was pretty good but dealt with it just well enough to keep it to 1 goal. Pepe had an unbelievable game covering Eliseu and Cedric because Poland did very well to get in behind. Portugal I understand the game plan that we are trying to execute but something doesn't seem quite right at the moment. We are trying to defend deep and compact so that when our opposition makes an error, we hit them quickly on the break. However, our execution is not consistent enough. We've only scored one goal on the break. It's not good enough. Poland made Cedric look average tonight which is something Croatia couldn't do. If I was Wales/Belgium, I'd be looking to exploit the space in behind the wide areas in order to get in behind our defence and create chances/score. Going forward, apart from Renato Sanches, we seriously lack creativity and direct running from our midfield which means when we play a world class opposition, we'll be easy to contain. Our combinations are too few and when they do occur they break down because players can't control the ball under pressure. We've also got major issues with with the #9 position. We've managed to grind out results in our favour and credit to the players but I think we should be concerned about our short term future. If this is the best 11 players we have in the country, there's cause for concern. Some lack the technical ability under pressure and others are poor decision makers. I'd be interested to know how many qualified coaches we have in Portugal and what the teaching process is. We've had a complete coaching overhaul in Australia to change the way we coach kids in order to improve their technical ability, tactical understand and most importantly get to improve on their decision making. The football the Australian NT plays is much better than Portugal's yet Portugal has the better players. On a side note, Pepe was the MOTM for me.
I felt Portugal did slightly better than Poland and between the two, Portugal was marginally the better side. But it was close enough that Portugal advancing based on the penalty lottery was fitting, even if they were IMO robbed of a legitimate penalty claim. One thing that surprises me is the fact that Portugal seems to have so much trouble scoring, despite having the likes of Ronaldo, Nani and Renato Sanches. The latter the MOTM against Poland in my book.
Agreed with these two points. Not a Pepe fan by any stretch (mostly for his antics), but this season he has had some very good games in major spots, clasico and UCL final, then a great performance today.