You can't really afford to that at this stage. Portugal's attack will likely be too strong to just hope they can do that for 90-120 minutes and hope to win it on penalties again. I don't think Portugal will make the same mistake of underestimating Morocco either. I think Portugal are a better team/squad than Spain as well. It's going to be interesting to see if Ronaldo is benched again. I guess they proved that they don't need him but it's still a balsy move. If it pays off it will be commended but if not I'm sure he will be criticised. Personally I don't think they should have brought him on at all in the last game. They were 5-1 up at that point and could have risked injuring him so they should have left him off and send home the message that he's not above being left out completely.
Also I think Portugal are used to and don't mind coming up against that kind of play and mentality. I expect Morocco will probably try to do as they've done, niggly little fouls, stout and resolute defence, but Portugal have the right kind of mix up to crack open that door.
I'll be hoping for goals today, yesterday was nice to see 4 goals in regular time, really want to see an early goal to force a comeback. Funny thing though is Netherlands played 80 minutes as if they were in the lead, so maybe Morocco won't be too perturbed. They'll fancy freekicks too.
Agree on Ronaldo. Send him home if they don't want to play, but I feel like it's a fine balance for the coach to keep morale. The crowd clearly loved him, the loudest cheers was when he came on.
On the one hand, such results are always shocking, on the other hand, I expected something like this (I wrote about it). Bright teams like Brazil are very often destroyed by disciplined "middle peasants". In fact, Brazil lost in the first serious match, they need to seriously think about their self-perception, maybe they overestimate themselves.
Congratulations Croatia. A great team that consistently performs successfully in all international tournaments. This is amazing for such a small country.
Congratulations Croatia. A great team that consistently performs successfully in all international tournaments. This is amazing for such a small country.
I wouldn't ever call Croatia a peasant team, haha. Rankings are a bit arbitrary but they've maintained a hugely respectable rank in FIFA, and do have decent players. The last time a team went far with peasants was Iceland, Trinidad & Tobago. Their teams had actual peasants, literal farmers! I'm not sure if the Greek Euro winners (who beat Ronaldo twice in the tourney) had peasants in their squad, but they were at least 5 times more "peasant" than this Croatia team!
. 
