In the 2022 World Cup, Portugal and Spain all fell at the feet of Morocco, and the two Latin technical teams had no way to face Morocco's dense defense, with empty possession, but they could not convert it into goals.
But in this European Championship, we saw a new Spain, they gave up too much ineffective possession, and instead added a lot of high ball crosses, risky through and long-range shots, one-on-one breakthroughs on the wings, although sacrificing a certain possession rate and pass success rate, but the offensive effect was immediate.
Portugal, on the other hand, is still following the old path, being too superstitious about the skill of the players, lacking strength and confrontation. Pepe, the core of the defense, and Ronaldo, the core of the attack, are 80 years old together, so Portugal did not dare to pull the rhythm too fast, and in order to ensure that the possession rate was stable, the conversion was very slow.
But in the cup, the weak team will generally adopt intensive defense, you wait for others to set up a formation, and the penalty area is full of people, how can it be so easy to penetrate it?
Today's opponents, Slovenia, are a typical defensive team, averaging just 33% possession per game, ranking last in the tournament.
However, Slovenia's success rate is very high, especially the ground confrontation success rate of 53.9%, ranking sixth, and it is a great thing for Slovenia to meet a team like Portugal who likes to walk on the ground.
Note that Slovenia have yet to concede a goal in this tournament, with both of their goals against Denmark and Serbia coming from set-pieces. However, Denmark and Serbia are professional set-piece teams, and their set-pieces are very threatening in their own right.
What level of set-pieces are Portugal? They only created 0.65 expected goals from set-pieces in this tournament, and considering that Portugal has formed a total of 25 corners in this European Cup, the attacking efficiency of set-pieces is inevitably too low.
Slovenia, on the other hand, was guarded by Atletico Madrid goalkeeper Oblak, who prevented a total of 2.33 goals in this tournament, ranking second among goalkeepers behind Georgia's Mamardashvili.
Striker believes that with Portugal's slow pace and extremely low set-piece efficiency, it may be difficult to break through the Slovenian bus, and if it is not, it will be dragged into extra time.