Portugal - Cristiano Ronaldo wants to take them further

Portugal

 Portugal’s hopes are always directly related to how Cristiano Ronaldo appears in the group stage. If in form, the Portuguese can dream high, if not they fail horribly. There are a constant presence in the group stage but their results are very inconsistent but they believe in themselves, and with a player like CR7, any team would dream.

How they qualified

After a very weak World Cup, Portugal started the qualification for France with an easy game, home with Albania.

 They were defeated and that made the Portuguese FA take action, sack Paulo Bento and appointing Fernando Santos, a very experienced manager, with the experience of the Greek National Team.

 The change worked well, result-wise, with Portugal winning the remaining games, all by one-goal difference. It was an easy qualification but the quality was very under what is expected from Portugal. 

Squad

Goalkeepers: Rui Patrício (Sporting CP), Anthony Lopes (Lyon), Eduardo (Dínamo Zagreb).

Defenders: Vieirinha (Wolfsburg), Cédric (Southampton), Pepe (Real Madrid), Ricardo Carvalho (Monaco), Bruno Alves (Fenerbahçe), José Fonte (Southampton), Eliseu (Benfica), Raphael Guerreiro (Lorient).

Midfielders: William Carvalho (Sporting CP), Danilo Pereira (Porto), João Moutinho (Monaco), Renato Sanches (Benfica), Adrien Silva (Sporting CP), André Gomes (Valencia), João Mário (Sporting CP).

Forwards: Rafa Silva (Braga), Ricardo Quaresma (Beşiktaş), Nani (Fenerbahçe), Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid), Éder (Lille).

Cristiano Ronaldo

Club : Real Madrid (SPA)

Age : 31 years

The best player in the world, innumerous records to his name and he will continue to add more until retirement. For Portugal, Ronaldo will soon be the most capped ever, after getting the best goalscorer. If anything is lacking from his curriculum is a title with his national team, and this will be one of the last chances he’ll get to do it.

João Mário

Club : Sporting CP (POR)

Age : 23 years

A new product from the famous ranks of Sporting CP, João Mário is a player that quickly impressed for his intelligence and tactical awareness, much more developed than normal for a player his age.

 This characteristics allow him to offer his team a huge versatility, as he can play all over the midfield and even as an inside winger, always with the same quality of process.

 

Fernando Santos

Appointed manager after the humiliation at the hands of Albania, Fernando Santos adopted a result-over-quality mentality to assure qualification wouldn’t get even tougher. It worked like a charm, as he guided his team with 7 out of 7 wins and now he said he wants to get to the final.

 If the mentality keeps working and he has the best Ronaldo, his dream seems like a real possibility.

What to expect from them?

Portugal is facing interesting times in football perspective. It’s a team that’s referenced as dangerous because they have Ronaldo, but never seen as candidate because they only have Ronaldo.

 It is true that if Santos’ team has in Ronaldo its main goal source, and the manager has been trying to find a system that best utilizes him while maximizing the rest of the player’s abilities. The choice appears to be a 4-4-2 that changes Portuguese history, that always presented us some variation of a 4-3-3.

 With the amount of options that players like Moutinho, João Mário, Rafa or Nani give, that 4-4-2 will be a very fluid system, that can change for a 4-3-3 in attack with João Mário and Nani opening up in the wings space for Ronaldo to finish the attacks.

 Fernando Santos has a dream and the best player in the world. He also has a plan. That’s more than most can say, and Portugal will try to write a new page in their history with the engineer's plan

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