If Nunes is back from his injury at Mallorca, he definitely can hold his own at CB. I always wondered why he was never given a shot at the NT.
Just keep giving him the ball. He will try back heels to nowhere or try to get by 5 players and fall.
It won't take a miracle, Bosnia has as much of a chance to win this playoff as much as us. We couldn't even beat Denmark so this leaves it wide open for Bosnia. What people don't recognize is that Portugal is not in a golden generation right now, we're not the same Portugal from Euro 2004 or FIFA 06. The current hand-picked generation doesn't seem to mesche well together on the field at all, there is just too many problems on all positions. So unless our coach does whats right, and pulls his head out of his arse, and calls up the right people, we really shouldn't be labelled as the advantageous side.
we SHOULD beat Bosnia easily....but WILL we? We also should have beat the crap out of Denmark in such an important game that BIG teams win. We went in with a small team mentality and lost. We'll see how we fair this time around.
Forgive me, but what on earth does such a common football platitude mean? I'd suggest look at a more technical explanation as to why Portugal fell short instead of resorting to ill-founded psycho-babble.
Portugal lost cuz... They were missing their best defenders. Cavalho, Coentrao, and Pepe... Take away 3 guys like that on any team and they will suffer. When they have their best, they can beat anyone. Heck they beat Denmark 4 - 1 and it could have been 8 - 1. Fact is they had 3 guys that probably never played 1 game together, that and the fact they probably thought Holland would beat Sweden... But why would they even want to help Portugal? Don't be surprise if that game was fixed. I can't remember Sweden scoring 3 goals vs a big team. But that's soccer, it's a fixed sport and you got to live with it. Portugal should beat Bosnia, no matter what the score is, they should win. If not... Then they are not good enough to be in Euro. It would be bad not seeing the best European player not in Euro "Ronaldo" and agruably the best passer in Europe "Nani". Seems like they can't get a coach that could be as good as Scolari. I think when the special one coaches them in 2018+ They will be great again. And by then they'll win games 1 - 0 to 5 - 0. Losing Cavalho is a joke at this stage, he's still one of the best and should play for his Country. Him leaving proves he never was Captain material. So you don't like the coach? Grow the heck up and play for your Country, it's an honor. Anyways, as long that we have Pepe and Coentrao... Who I think his the best defender on the whole team but also can change a game with his passing. Go Portugal go, November 11th is my Dad's birthday, so let's win. WC 2014 in Brasil will be awesome though, cuz I think they will lfavor Brasil and Portugal, so they need to improve and qualify 1st in their division.
Yeah, our latest stretch of coaches are so far off from Scolari in terms of the proper ability to coach. We will win once Jose Mourinho becomes the national team coach, mark my words
Not qualifying a week ago is probably a good thing for the NT, when you take in account the mess of a cohesive unit they have been fielding. This will allow a couple more games to get their sh!t in order and TRY to develop a little unity in regards to both tactics and the new personel additions.
So first you state that any team that misses 3 great players can lose but then you accuse Holland of possible cheating without mentioning who they missed. Netherlands missed Robben, Sneijder, de Jong (still with his foot not 100% and was unlucky in yesterday's CL game) Heitinga and first keeper Stekelenburg. That's 5 starters and Affelay would have had a starting spot if you look at Kuyt's recent performances, so that's basically 6. Holland in that case will also suffer. We had another weird game against Hungary with the end result of 5-3 at home this qualification. Conceding 3 goals as against Sweden. De Jong was also not present in that game. It starts to be clear to me that he, although being a very sober player, does assure we don't have any freak results and maintain consistency game after game. Throwing this game is exactly the opposite of the philosophy that van Marwijk has tried to install in the team. Winning is a habit, the more you do it, the stronger it gets. The Dutch FA and players are well payed pro's and that makes the risk of being lured by a money offer less likely. I am not going to sit on a high horse and say it is impossible for Dutch and Swedes to ever arrange such a thing, but I would like to hear what was so weird in this loss other than the 3 goals, something Hungary was also able to do. All I know is that I have not heard a word about consequences for any other country in Dutch media. Every country is self centered and we were busy having a flawless qualification as we had for the WC qualification 2010. Spain was is on a 22 winning streak we were on 17 game winning streak. We wanted to keep on winning, but that's hard -as you have stated yourself- with missing your best players.
Anything can happen but bento better prepare these guys. We're in this position because of dumb ass Queiroz. Look at the positive, we'll have the back three back.
I also don't see anything wrong here. Sweden needed to win , Holland didn't. Portugal , the coach and the players called in , of course, only need to blame themselves on this loss in Denmark. The idea that someone else is going to help the team qualifying needs to forever disappear from the Portuguese FA psyche.
Hold on to your tinfoil hat!!...that game wasn't a fix and you can't have seen the game or the dutch players celebrations when they scored a goal. Sweden has lost 2 games in 20 years or so in Stockholm. Beating the Swedish team in Stockholm is not an easy thing. When Sweden faced Portugal somewhat recently it was a massive letdown that the game ended 0-0. Considering the chances, Sweden should've won that one with more than the odd goal.. and in fairness Portugal should've done the same in the following 0-0 match in Lissabon. The truth of the matter is that Portugal deserves to be in the play-offs because of a lackluster performance, end of story
Ok, but even if this is true which it probably is, still Netherlands would not be crying if they, with a loss still 'win' in helping to elliminate one of their nemesis's.
Statistical Portugal is the nemesis, but I have actually only heard people around me say they wanted to play Portugal especially in a final to optimize the get back feeling