GoN_

HELL YEAH!

Don't know whether or not this is true but... Just leaving this here because it is quite awesome...

HELL YEAH!

QUARESMA!

While it would seem easier to me if we played England in the next round, at least if by any miracle we get our shit straight and beat Croatia we have a very good chance... Being third in that group is just shameful, but at least we are still in the tournament.

Not really great if you are Portuguese... fml

I think it is conceivable that if we win tomorrow, and we win the group, we beat Belgium... Of course there are a lot of ifs in there, but I don't think it is out of question. Could you imagine if after our first two games, and how the press has been thrashing Ronaldo, we got to the semi-finals? Or the final?

That's the spirit...

So, nobody is good enough... Just like Portugal and our perennial lack of good strikers.

What are the other goalkeeper options for England?

Great play.

Fair enough.

And China's population is around 130 times that of Portugal. It is not like they are a football super power. And yes, that was me being dense on purpose. I get the point, I still don't agree that that is a good approach at this stage. I still maintain that a team with that kind of mentality will hardly ever do anything of real relevance in a tournament like this. It seems like we will have to agree to disagree.

Either it's the language barrier or we are understanding his words in a completely different way. This is the quote I got: If you tell me that they will have to play differently against other teams you are completely proving his point. They can't keep playing this way or they will be out really soon. And you can't compare a team that stayed at the back even when they were behind to what Mourinho does. That's just dishonest. He defends when he actually has something to defend. And yet, I also think that he has been overdoing his defensive approach too much. Repetitive? We just changed our tactics for our last few matches. We stopped trying to play with a clear striker (because we have no one who can do it well) and just put Ronaldo and Nani/Quaresma open up front. We are much closer to a 4-4-2 with the two upfront playing wide, rather than the 4-3-3 that we had been using for the past 15 or so years. There was a lot of underperforming on our midfield and a lack of defensive organization.

Because he wasn't scoring a butt-load of goals in the Premier League before leaving... But yes, he has been underachieving for the National Team and has been showing that he is not a good team captain. His attitude yesterday was god awful during the match. But our problem is far from being just Ronaldo. We defended really poorly through the whole match. Only Guerreiro seemed to know what he was doing, which is worrying when we see that we have two really experienced center backs like Carvalho and Pepe (Pepe really seemed lost in defense yesterday). I believe we will go through (even if we go as one of the third placed teams), but we if don't get our shit straight we will be out before the quarter-finals.

So, Ronaldo is right... They will have to have a different approach/mentality if they want to achieve anything out of this tournament other than getting a point.

I have no problem with a team having some kind of advantage and parking the bus (I enjoyed the hell out of Inter and Chelsea wins over Barcelona in the Champions League). I do have a problem with a team that is losing and doing jack shit to turn it around. Yes it worked, because Portugal's defense was rubbish and conceded in Iceland's first attempt to attack since Portugal scored, but if you can't see how that will be a problem if they try to replicate it against Austria and Hungary than one of us is completely missing the point of how the game works. Maybe it's me.

They were losing 1-0 and still parking the bus. It is not because Ronaldo said so, it is just common sense. You play like that and you lose 1 out of 10 times. I think the problem here is just with who said it, because if it was somebody else, nobody would get that worked up about it.

Yeah, it is normal for Iceland fans to be happy for their draw, but Ronaldo is kinda right. A team that shoots twice at goal in an hour of a group stage match will hardly achieve anything. Even the 2004 Greek team would try harder to win the damn match.

It's that time of the year again! Benfica beat Nacional 3-1 to complete a 13 game winning streak, conquering our first three-peat in 39 years and shattering the league's point record (previously held by Mourinho's Porto team). Here some photos of the celebration of our 35th championship win:

Last tuesday it was something like 29ºC during the afternoon (If you don't know whether that's hot or not, google it).

Welp...

Meanwhile, it seems like Kevin-Prince Boateng failed a medical, as he was about to join Sporting.

In what could become one of the biggest shakeups in years for this league, it seems like Jorge Jesus is leaving Benfica, after back to back League wins, and six years as coach, for Sporting Lisbon. I don't even...