After beating Slovenia 3-0 on penalties, Portugal could finally breathe a sigh of relief. However, the team should not take it lightly, because in the upcoming quarter-finals, the team will face a very luxurious French team on paper. It's going to be a very tough opponent. With Portugal's current form, they still need to be prepared to win France. Otherwise, it is very likely that it will stop there.
After four games, the current strengths and weaknesses of the Portuguese team are in fact very clear. The team certainly has a lavish squad on paper, with superstar players in every position. But the lack of a reliable center forward remains unresolved. In most cases, they can only play Cristiano Ronaldo as a lone arrow. However, the 39-year-old Portuguese veteran has struggled to function as a lone striker in high-intensity matches. He couldn't play in the box and wasn't as fit as he used to be.
This makes the Portuguese team's attacking routine very simple, and in the past few games, the Portuguese team's midfielder has basically combed the ball and advanced, handed the ball to the winger, and then the winger crossed to Cristiano Ronaldo. This almost became a fixed template for Portugal's attack. However, opponents can often find this problem after the first ten minutes, so Ronaldo is caught in hand-to-hand combat with the opponent's defenders. Once the opposite side pinches Ronaldo's point, it is difficult for the other players of the Portuguese team to have a direct threat. This was the case against Slovenia, when the opponent's three lines tightened and Ronaldo was given the right amount of confrontation and help to defend. Portugal's attack was completely muted.
It almost cost the team an early ticket home, which is the case against a normal team like Slovenia, and Portugal won't have such a high margin for error against France. In addition to this, there is another hidden danger for the team to solve, and that is the team's backline. The 41-year-old veteran Pepe is certainly getting older, but the long hours of high-intensity competition have left him showing signs of physical exhaustion. In this game, Pepe's low-level mistakes in the back line gave the Slovenian striker a chance to make a single knife, and at this moment, Pepe's two consecutive weak leg movements also announced that his physical fitness had reached a bottleneck.
Moreover, this game played another 120 minutes, and it was very risky for Portugal to continue to start Pepe in the next game. France's attacking group is a powerful attacker and the 41-year-old will struggle to defend against with his current fitness. But the Portuguese team does not have a very good solution, and the talented central defender Antonio Silva, who emerged before the team, is embarrassed to use at this stage. He was allowed to play in the third game, but unfortunately two huge mistakes led directly to the team conceding goals and losing to Georgia.
The original plan of the team may have been to put Antonio Shilva on top when Pepe's physical strength could not support it. But for now, it's better to continue to trust Pepe. Of course, in addition to some flaws at both ends of the pitch, Portugal also have an advantage against France. First of all, the overall form of the French team is very poor at the moment. In the four games since the start of the tournament, the French team has still not scored a goal. Their three goals were an own goal in the group stage, a penalty by Ousmane Dembele and an own goal by their opponents in this round. The Gallic Roosters had a big problem on the offensive end, and they didn't play the true power of the attacking group in the front line.
Either there is a problem with Didier Deschamps' tactics, or the players' form on the pitch is too poor. For Portugal, there shouldn't be too much pressure on their defence, which gives the team hope of winning. At the same time, there is also good news that Ronaldo and Mbappe have had an all-round advantage in the past few conversations. The two have met four times in all competitions, with Cristiano Ronaldo winning three and drawing one and scoring five goals. Mbappe's failure to score a goal while his overall record is on the back burner gives Ronaldo a certain psychological advantage. Judging from the current head-to-head record of the two, Mbappe is still a little fan in front of Ronaldo after all. What do you think about this?