| LuStaysTru said: Portugal! They really got a quality team and have produced some good results the past four years (besides qualifying but they did have many clean sheets). Also they are finally considered true underdogs this time out. I mean some people are predicting Ivory Coast over Portugal?? All I know is when Portugal expects to win, they lose. This time they will be working for it. Ronaldo is great but he can't win the cup alone. Thankfully he won't have to. Simao, Liedson, Deco but especially Nani, lately he's been at the top of his game. They will find the goal (finally). Besides them their Iberian neighbors Spain have been really impressive as of late. |
It's nice to see someone outside Portugal rooting for our team 
Qualifying was a troublesome period for our team, mainly because we came from the Scolari era, which created many rifts in our team. Players were getting complacent and thought they had fixed spots in the national team, so Queiroz tried to show that he could pick whomever he wanted. That lead to use using over 50 players during qualifiers, which in turn hurt us in a lot of matches.
I think Ronaldo may do a great cup, but Nani, Meireles and Bruno Alves will also be paramount to what we will achieve on the cup. If Deco recovers some of his previous form, he too will be massively important to our team.
Didn't knew that about people betting Ivory Coast over Portugal. It's true that they have an offensive to be feared, but they're very disorganized in the back. Since Portugal plays a very counter-offensive football, that could cause a bit of damage to them. The contrary can also be said, if they start dominating us mid-field, we might suffer some goals as well.
The first two matches will be paramount to our fate in the WC. If we manage to get the 6 points against Ivory Coast and North Korea, then we don't have to worry too much in the match against Brazil. The problem though, is that second place in the group will most definitely match us up against Spain in the last 16 match 
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