Substance over style

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2016 (3366 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Nani first played together for Portugal on Sept. 1, 2006, when the latter made a scoring, international debut in a 4-2 loss to Denmark.

Since then, the former Manchester United teammates have accounted for nearly one-third of their country’s goals, including four of five at the ongoing European Championship.

Mainstays of the Portugal attack for the better part of a decade, they’re not unaccustomed to carrying the load offensively, which is what they’ve been doing the last two weeks in France.

Sort of.

 

Ronaldo, you see, notched his pair of tallies in a 12-minute span against Hungary. He’s struggled for extended stretches at this tournament and missed a penalty in a scoreless draw with Austria.

Four days before that, the only headlines he managed from a 1-1 draw with Iceland involved his unsavoury remarks about Portugal’s Group F rival, who he accused of having a “small” mentality.

“Iceland didn’t try anything,” he complained. “They were just defend, defend, defend and playing on the counterattack.”

Hmmm…

Sounds a lot like your team’s strategy in the round of 16 against Croatia, Cristiano. You know, the one in which you didn’t place a single shot on target until the 117th minute? The shot that came off a counterattack and set up Ricardo Quaresma to score?

It’s the reason Portugal are in this position — a victory away from a semifinal at a major competition. And they’ll do themselves no harm in that match against Poland, Thursday in Marseille, if their setup is similarly pragmatic.

Nani, for his part, is relishing the style of play and the opportunity it presents. He insists he’s playing his best international soccer to date but admits he’d much rather enjoy collective success.

“If (to win Euro 2016) we need to give up playing well, let’s do it!,” he told Correiro da Manha Tuesday.

It’s not an unlikely scenario.

Croatia, after all, arrived in Lens having just beaten Spain. Man for man they were expected to dominate possession against Portugal, and while they largely did they also failed to find a breakthrough over 90 minutes and extra time.

Defenders Pepe and Jose Fonte, the latter of whom was making his tournament bow, gave little away in front of goalkeeper Rui Patricio; William Carvalho and Adrien Silva combined for seven tackles in midfield and repeatedly disrupted their opponent’s build-up play.

Renato Sanches, when he came on in the 50th minute, provided Portugal a threat on the dribble, and Quaresma, who was introduced in the 87th, bundled home the winner from a Ronaldo rebound.

“We were up against an amazing team,” remarked Portugal manager Fernando Santos in his post-match news conference. “Sometimes you have to be pragmatic. It would be nice to play pretty, but that’s not always how you win tournaments.”

And this Portugal team is out to win, even if its players haven’t delivered the highlights of France, Germany and Belgium. As we’ve already seen this month, this is the Euro where the unlikely reigns.

Take Italy, for example.

Here is a team that, on paper, is easily its country’s worst in a generation. And yet, they not only eliminated Spain in the round of 16 but also looked comfortable doing it.

Much like Portugal, they’ll gladly absorb pressure for long passages, and there isn’t a side at this competition as lethal on the counterattack, or as generally hard-working, as the Azzurri.

They’ll face Germany Saturday in Bordeaux.

Wales, too, are rather unlikely semifinalists, if only because they’ve not been to a European Championship before. But winning Group B allowed them the luxury of avoiding the perceived heavyweights in the round of 16, although a difficult quarter-final encounter with Belgium awaits on Friday.

Still, with Gareth Bale in the squad they do possess the potential moment of magic that could put them into a first, major semifinal in their history.

Then there is Iceland. Or, as a patronizing segment of the English press would have you believe, a sparsely populated island nation whose hut-dwelling inhabitants rely on cod fishing and part-time dentistry for their modest livelihoods.

What’s most unfortunate about Iceland’s victory over England is the English, seemingly extra-wound up after the events of the past week, managed to make everything about themselves, leaving their meagre analysis of a very good Iceland team to the toxicity of insults and condescension.

The soccer lessons of England’s Monday defeat are secondary. This is a country with little sense of itself and even less sense of its place in the world, and the world, generally, beyond its shores. The Brexit vote and its ongoing fallout reveals this, as does the arrogance and “other-ing” weaved into English soccer.

Iceland, the fact is, proved a superior side on the day, and England, as it happens, gave them their easiest game of Euro 2016 to date.

France is next, and Sunday in Saint-Denis they’ll face a team that relishes its time apart from the ball, goes into tackles comfortably and closes down space as well as any team at this competition.

Iceland can win their quarter-final. So can Italy and Wales. And so can Portugal.

At this European Championship, the unlikely isn’t unlikely at all.

jerradpeters@gmail.comTwitter @JerradPetersff