A few days after a surprise defeat against Georgia, Ronaldo and Portugal are favourites but watch out for Slovenia.
Three-man defense, hybrid system, silent Cristiano Ronaldo… Portugal, one of the contenders for Euro 2024, faces Slovenia on Monday (9 p.m. in Frankfurt) as the favorites, but still with some doubts about their real level.
A deceptive first place? Portugal, who arrived in Germany with the best record in the qualifying phase (100% wins in a weak group), finished top of their group, but without really knowing where to place them among the tournament’s big names.
The Portuguese certainly impressed during their defeat against Turkey (3-0), but before that they had to wait until the last minute to win (2-1) against the Czech Republic, before collapsing (2- 0) against Georgia in the third match, with a reshuffled team.
Looking for the best system to showcase a squad full of talent, coach Roberto Martinez still seems to hesitate between a hybrid 3-5-2 and a more classic 4-3-3 which exposes his full-backs Nuno Mendes (Paris Saint-Germain) and Joao Cancelo (FC Barcelona) defensively.
The defeat against Georgia, the first under the orders of the Spanish technician, only amplified the doubts, even if most of his starters were rested.
Fuzzy instructions
The indestructible Pepe, still the boss of the Portuguese defense at 41, believes that his team must improve and “learn lessons” from this first setback before facing Slovenia on Monday, victorious in the last duel between the two countries in a friendly in March (2-0). “We have to learn from what we didn’t do well as players, whether we followed what the coach asked us to do in general, and of course, try not to make mistakes during the next match”he summed up.
Some Portuguese media assure that the players do not understand Martinez’s plans and therefore have difficulty implementing them. “We wonder if Roberto Martinez understood what went wrong against Georgia, and the Czech Republic, for that matter”we can read in the newspaper A Bola. “It’s hard to see in the faces (many players) a team that knows what it is doing and, perhaps more importantly, believes in it”. There are also concerns that Martinez is placing too much faith in his superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, 39, who failed to score in any of the three group matches of a major international competition for the first time in his career.
Slovenia with Oblak
Against Slovenia, a formidable opponent who held England and Denmark to a draw to qualify for the last 16, it is difficult to say what the Seleçao will look like. But the 2016 European champion, always looking for his best version in competition, theoretically has enough talent (Cancelo, Bernardo Silva, Rafael Leao, Vitinha, etc.) to reach the quarter-finals.
He will nevertheless have to be wary of the two Slovenian strong men: Atlético Madrid goalkeeper Jan Oblak, capable of transforming into a real wall, and Leipzig striker Benjamin Sesko, unhappy since the start of the Euro but extremely dangerous deflecting and capable of scoring from afar with a huge strike of the ball, who has already shaken the German nets 14 times this season.
