Portugal just drawn into Group A as the first team out of the pot. Let's see who we get...wanting to avoid Ukraine, Serbia, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden from pot 2 just so we can play someone different for once.
We get Serbia...again Rep. Ireland from pot 3... Luxembourg from pot 4. Azerbaijan from pot 5 Portugal Serbia Rep. Ireland Luxembourg Azerbaijan No excuses not to easily finish top of the group, was hoping to avoid a long travel destination but we drew Azerbaijan. Serbia and Ireland will be decent but we should win.
Serbia has some nice talent, but they’ve been in very poor form recently. At this point in time, failure to qualify out of this group would have to rank as one of the biggest disappointments in the history of the national team.
Great draw for Portugal to get one of the two Pot 2 countries that didn't qualify for Euro 2020 and an Ireland squad from Pot 3 that honestly might be the worst in that pot based on current form. I watched both their dour losses to Finland this fall during which they never appeared capable of scoring. And while Luxembourg is a tough nut to crack, there's a big difference between getting them from Pot 4 as opposed to Pot 5. Pot 4 also had Bosnia, for instance. No excuses to do anything less than run away with this group.
We have a tradition to uphold here. Struggle the first 2 games, drop some points, get everyone upset, and then play catch up and barely qualify. No matter the difference in the present selecao, and past, this is basically the 1 guarantee we should all get use to with Portugal.
It's not so much struggling in easy groups, it's just starting slow nearly every qualifying campaign in one way or another. But this is quite clearly the weakest group of opponents Portugal has faced since 2006 WC Qualifying. Serbia and Ireland are in really poor shape right now. They combined for one win out of 12 matches in Nations League this year and Ireland scored one goal in its six matches. Those two and Luxembourg are going to share a lot of points between them head to head.
Receiving a loss in this group would be extremely disappointing. On paper we should only drop 2 points max, nothing more than that. 7 wins and 1 draw
Of course, it’s into our group. https://www.independent.co.uk/sport...qatar-world-cup-2022-qualifying-b1768149.html
Happy to see Palhinha and Nuno Mendes called up. They both really deserve the call for their performances this year. Pote must be a little disappointed, but I’ve got no problem at all with players biding their time and getting tournament experience for the u21s
At least we won’t have to see William danilo together. Wouldn’t change a single thing from those callups also IN before “where is pote Mario inacio jovane!!!! If they were in benfica they would already have 790 caps and be sold for 200m each by now!”
I may be in the minority about this, but I'm glad Cedric is back on the team even if it's only temporary. He's always been solid for Portugal and Semedo isn't playing in a back four at Wolves and there's no need to push Ricardo so soon after returning to the pitch for Leicester City. I'm also pleased to see Neto keep his spot on the team. His quality is proven at this point and he'd had significantly better G+A numbers if he played for a team who actually got players into the box or just had a healthy Raul Jimenez available. Pote would be on the squad, I think, if the U21s were merely playing qualifiers, but I'm good with him staying down since it's for the actual group stage of the U21 Euro. No excuse for anything less than 9 points.
Yea makes no sense. Rafa is a washed and inconsistent as hell. The fact that he gets call up over Pote is laughable and screams of favoritism.
Yeah I’m not unhappy at Cedrics inclusion, Semedo hasn’t been good enough for Wolves this season and Cedric has been better than Bellerin for Arsenal. It’s also clear after the season that Cancelo has had that he should be starting the majority of our games
Been a while since we last seen them play. Really excited for this game to see how how our players mesh together. Since our last game some of our players have IMO reach new higher Plato levels. Players like Jota, Andre Silva. Nuno Mendes.