The national team of Portugal went from double – Sport – Kommersant

In the last match of the second round of the group stage of the World Cup, Portugal – Uruguay won the 2016 European champions, in which both goals were scored by Bruno Fernandes. Thus, the Portuguese team was the first to guarantee itself access to the 1/8 finals from group H. The Uruguayans will have a decisive match with the Ghana team in the third round.

In the central match of group H, teams came together that were a bit similar in structure to each other. In both, prominent roles are still played by stars, for whom this World Cup will certainly be the last. These are world-class defenders, 39-year-old Portuguese Pepe and 36-year-old Uruguayan Diego Godin, and famous forwards, 37-year-old Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo and 35-year-old Edinson Cavani. At the same time, both teams have the brightest representatives of the new wave – for example, the 23-year-old Portuguese talent João Felix and the 25-year-old leader of the Uruguayan midfield Rodrigo Betancourt, who organized the brightest episode of the first half. Approximately half an hour after the start of the match, he took the initiative, skillfully made his way through the Portuguese defense, but could not outplay goalkeeper Diogo Costa, who moved forward in time and reduced the angle of fire.

If Betancourt scored that goal, it would certainly not only become one of the most spectacular in the tournament. Otherwise, before the break, there was a stubborn, but rather monotonous struggle of technically very skillful rivals on the field. Often in the spotlight were Cristiano Ronaldo, Joao Felix and Bruno Fernandes. From time to time, the same Betancourt and Darwin Nunez tried to aggravate the situation in someone else’s penalty area, but as a rule, things did not come to real threats to the goal. The defense of the Portuguese as a whole looked solid. True, at the end of the first half, it changed, as the youngest participant in the match left the field – 20-year-old PSG defender Nuno Mendes, who, apparently, suffered from a relapse of an old muscle injury.

This rather viscous game went on for several more minutes of the second half, after which the Portuguese opened the scoring. At first, the goal was recorded on Cristiano Ronaldo, who, with a nod of his head, seemed to have sent the ball into the goal after a pass by Bruno Fernandes, his recent teammate at Manchester United, but then it turned out that this touch was not.

Immediately football went on a collision course, albeit with an eye on defense. In the middle of the second half, the head coach of the Uruguayans, Diego Martin Alonso, made a double substitution and released a new pair of strikers – another famous veteran, Luis Suarez and Maxi Gomez, who immediately loaded the post. The Uruguayans stepped up the pressure. From a favorable situation, Suarez did not hit the gate, and almost immediately Georgian de Arrascaeta missed his moment. And the Portuguese coach, the most experienced Fernando Santos, replaced Cristiano Ronaldo, who seems to be tired.

The denouement came already in injury time, when the Iranian referee Alireza Fagani, after watching the video, awarded a penalty for an unobvious intentional handball by defender Jose Jimenez. Bruno Fernandes approached the penalty mark, elegantly outplaying goalkeeper Sergio Rocheta. After that, the Uruguayans, feeling their doom, practically stood up, and Bruno Fernandes could do a hat-trick twice, but in the first case, the goalkeeper got in the way of the ball, and in the second, the post.

As a result – 2:0, and the Portuguese team secured access to the 1/8 finals, and almost certainly – from the first place. It now has 6 points, the Ghana team – 3, and the teams of Uruguay and South Korea – 1 each. Portugal can lose leadership only under an unlikely combination of two conditions: if it itself loses to South Korea in the third round, and Ghana defeats Uruguay. In this case, you will have to consider the difference between goals scored and conceded, which at the moment is +3 for the Portuguese, and zero for the Africans.

Evgeny Fedyakov