This is a very special title. As I wrote in a past post, this Portugal team was not even liked here in pt (not because the style of play) mostly because of club reasons. This is a transitional team between uprising players who have yet to play at the big leagues (patricio,mario, william, adrien, renato,guerreiro) , top players (ronaldo,pepe) and then a mix between players in a downward trajectory (nani,quaresma,moutinho, carvalho) and a few others like cedric who had the chance to do what the first group will do (play in better leagues) and you can see that he is much more used to a certain physicality and pace, and Fonte. We have no strikers, and its a huge limitation that almost no other national team has.
Because of this context, it«s really hard to expect Portugal to behave like it has done in the past. When almost half of the team still plays in the Portuguese league, that comes with the price. They will flourish in bigger clubs and get used to a different pace, but for now they have a great sense of positioning and control. Even this team it's very unnatural. Mario is a center midfield and was obliged to play next to the lanes. Nani and Ronaldo were put in the center. William/Adrien/Renato were forced to play with a defensive mind that none goes through the year. It's a huge accomplishment considering the context.
We've been very consistent. Since 2000 we've been in the semi/final/quarter/semi/final in Euros. We lost to France (who won), Germany and Spain (who won). There has to be respect for what a small 11 million country is able to accomplish in this tournaments consistently.
Congrats boy. Really happy for all, but specially for Sporting players and Sporting former players who are basically the skeleton on this team (10 Sporting youth played yesterday in the final, which might a record).
It's one of those victories that will never be forgotten in history.
France-Gaf, we know the felling. I'm not very attached to national teams so. at the time, that didint really affected me. But it's a shitty situation that will pass. We know what France has been through and you guys deserve to be happy but i also want to note that Portugal since 2009 has been through a lot. People don't know how hard things can be here, we live in Europe but we're not prosperous at all. Football is, by far, our greatest passion. The whole country fucking deserved to be happy.
That's nice!
