Topic: ⚽ UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany ⚽ - Qualifiers - page 350. (Read 46458 times)

So I did not check all the games yesterday but seeing that great recovery from Moldova made me think a lot,how come a team who was completely dominated by Albania 3 days ago where they lost 2-0 in just three days to get the power needed to come back from 0-2 to 3-2 against a team that is the contender for qualifying.Things have changed a lot and dramatically in group E now as Poland is in 4th place and not that many games remain plus they have a strong game in Albania in September and also one game at home against the leader of the group Czech where in these games they may as well lose points.I think Santos their coach should be sacked for that disastrous result yesterday.

Getting a win against Estonia is never a way to evaluate your performance, especially if you're ranked as 4th best team in the world according to FIFA most recent football country ranking lists.

And for what it's worth, they might have gotten their win and the scoreline also suggest it was an easy win, however, I'm strongly opined that their style of play or overall performance is still well below par to me and they'll still struggle to compete at the top levels, and the Euro 2024 is actually not too far away as it would seem, so there is still a lot of adjustment and changes that needs to be implemented into the squad.

Belgium were struggling in first 30 minutes of this game and Estonia were doing impressive but after having some adjustment things were completely under their control and before end of first half we have two goals from the Lukaku which was good and after having good control they score third in second half which allow me to have good return of my investment on them before start of match because in early minutes as things were going I was feeling pressure and there were chance for the another draw, but now they handle this all in better way and win their match against weak opponent.

Portugal plays against Iceland because Israel and Portugal both are in different groups, and we have no chance of their matches in this campaign, with Portugal won by 1 - 0 thanks to Cristiano Ronaldo late goal.

Iceland put up a good fight against Portugal, but in general their performance is going down. Their main players such as Birkir Bjarnason and Birkir Már Sævarsson are getting old. And the younger players are not capable of replacing them. Iceland surprised everyone when they reached the Quarter-finals stage of Euro Cup in 2016. And after that they managed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in 2018 (and trust me, it is not that easy to qualify for the World Cup from UEFA confederation). But after that, their performance has been on the downhill.

Since the beginning of match apparently Iceland was aiming draw result from this match because they had displayed defensive style game and probably they were realized it's hard for them to beat Portugal and you can see it from their statistics that Iceland only have 28% ball possessions and Iceland can able to managed their defense until 88 minutes but indeed everything looks different when Willumsson got the red card that Portugal can easily to penetrate their defensive lines which make Ronaldo can able to scored goal and bringing Portugal to collect 3 points from this match and after this result Portugal has 12 points from 4 matches and they got first place with 2 points difference above to Slovakia

In the match against Iceland, Portugal should have won with a fairly superior score, but again their finishing still looked bad to convert into goals. Portugal managed to score a goal in the final minutes through Cristiano Ronaldo's kick which took advantage of Goncalo Inacio's assist which also closed the victory for Portugal with a score of 0-1. There was tension after the goal as the referee had to look at the VAR to determine whether it was offside or not, but it appeared to be a goal and Cristano met the goal with his teammates.

In this match, Cristiano Ronaldo also re-entered his name in the Guinness Book of World Records after reaching 200 caps with Portugal. It's definitely not easy during his 20-year career with Portugal and at 38 he can still be decisive in victory for Portugal.

Bosnia's loss to Luxembourg was completely unexpected. And it is the same Luxembourg that went down against Portugal by a margin of 0-6. Perhaps their overdependence on Edin Džeko is becoming a disadvantage now and younger players are not filling the vacuum left by the retiring ones. At this point, they are at 4th position in Group J, behind Portugal, Slovakia and Luxembourg. Iceland has also disappointed so far in the same group. Out of their 4 matches, they have been able to win just 1. Looks like Portugal and Slovakia will qualify to the next round, as there is not much opposition from the other teams.

They controlled the match and created many opportunities. The veteran striker Cristiano Ronaldo got some chances and made some good finishes and at late minutes of the match, he scored the only goal which brings three points to Portugal.

In the last few months, since World Cup 2022, he shown that he is still good enough to play well in Saudi Professional League and when he returned to Europe with his national team, he still shows that he can play well at highest level. Despite of Cristiano good performance, we must recognize that he is no longer as good as he was a few seasons ago. He is older and his age is affecting his performance more negatively. We still have time to enjoy Cristiano performance with awareness that he will retire his player career in near future.

Portugal were completely in control of this match with having 12 shorts on goal but still they were able to score their winner in 89th minute thanks to veteran Ronaldo which give winner to his team with this win now they have four consecutive wins in this event and not concede any goal which is impressive from their side now we will have next match after three months.

Bosnia lost their match at home which is their third defeat after having first win in their first game and Luxembourg were really at his best throughout this match after taking lead in just four minutes of the game and after this missed penalty was also big disappointment for them Luxembourg have just three shots on goal and these were enough for them to score two goals and have another win in this campaign.

LOL.. this is a team which was once ranked #1 as per the FIFA ratings. Their main issue is that they are overdependent on a few players such as Romelu Lukaku. When these players are out of form, the team performance get impacted. One-man armies don't perform consistently in general. Apart from Belgium, Portugal and Norway are also good examples for this. Anyway, Belgium has managed to get to second spot in Group F, above Sweden. Sweden is another team that is on the decline, so Belgium should not worry too much about qualifying for the final tournament.

They won the match easily but they still need fresh legs in their team. The team is really old and used up and in 3-4 years those players wont be able to do anything at all. But i still dont see any young prospects that can carry Belgium in the next couple of years. We seen that this experienced old players didnt do anything on world cup

Only thing that I can say about Poland today - Kurwa mac ja pierdole. How you can let mighty Moldova to win when you're leading game 0:2. And now they even let Moldova ahead on the table.
Iceland - Portugal, I already didn't believed that Portugal will score. But it's simply impossible that Ronaldo won't score when he become first player in the world to play 200 games for his national team. That record and dramatic goal on last minutes - perfect scenario.
I'm not really sure that Luxembourg win against Bosnia can be called as big upset. It's enough to look at clubs of Luxembourg players and you will understand that's good team. And seems that they're going to give fight for spot in EURO.

Iceland 0 - 1 Portugal



It was a very strange game in my opinion, I think it's strange because before the game I looked at Portugal as the favorite who would win this game without any difficulty, but on the field I saw everything different, in the 1st half Portugal just reached the goalkeeper's zone opponent they couldn't score goals, portugal hardly managed to cause any danger to the opponent, and time was passing and all I saw was portugal without any good form of playing, I had no idea how to cause great danger to the opponent. I confess that until then I accepted the fact that in this game there would be no goals, unless it was a goal coming from the opponent's side

the 1st half ended, in the 2nd half portugal entered with another attitude, they were more determined to score a goal and win the game, with that they started to cause danger in the opponent's zone, but they could not score a goal, ronaldo was the most dissatisfied, until the coach made some changes that thanks to these changes portugal managed to score a goal, ronaldo scored the only goal of the game and with that portugal won the game. despite this victory i see that portugal with so many good players are playing very badly, they should be able to easily win this game, if they want to win the euro then they will need to improve a lot

It's really surprising to see the results of the matches in Group D. Yes, that's right, Croatia and Wales are the top 2 most favorite clubs to qualify for the next round. however, what happened, this was really surprising, especially for Wales, he even lost to Armenia. I don't know because they underestimated it or because Armenia is currently in their great performance. but it's still early in the qualifiers and they will have to do even better in the future. Although in truth, Wales at this time may not be as strong as in previous years.

50 minutes played in the game and Iceland didn't received a goal yet vs Portugal which are dominating the game. I doubt they will resist until the end of the game.
Meanwhile Bosnia are 1 goal behind of Luxembourg, that was quite surprising! Otherwise the other games are running as expected with the favorite team dominating and leading their matches.

It's always difficult to predict how Belgium will play. They are now 2-0 up and the second half has started. Both goals have come from Lukaku. The game goes to 2.5 goals over. Estonia is not resisting.

If it was me in the Portugal match, I wouldn't count on a Portugal win. Iceland is not a bad team. I chose to stay away from this match in betting. Even if you want to take a risk, as you said, it makes more sense to wait for a while and enter when the odds increase.

Belgium is one of the most curious teams in recent times
In theory it is an extremely good team, they even ended in good positions, as in the 2018 world cup, in 3rd place. They have already eliminated the Brazil team, which was VERY good at the time, but in the decisive matches something is always missing. And in the last World Cup it was very clear that they were not a united team.

In this qualifiers I bet Belgium is easily 1st in the group, but because of their opponents.

At the moment Belgium is beating Estonia 1 x 0
Edit: now 2 x 0

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I couldn't place the bets before the matches start, but I will do as soon as the first half is over.
Portugal is still 0-0, and is at 1.55 odds for the win.
I think you can wait a little bit to raise to 1.70 or more and bet on victory, I do not believe it will give a draw, especially Portugal that is scoring many goals

And am here watching the game thinking how these guys found themselves into the top 5 footballing nation..

Estonia has looked more dangerous whenever they go infront of goal and Belgium is really struggling to snitch together some good passes...maybe the absence of Kevin De Bruyne has left the team without that creative touch to it   but this Belgium team is disappointing.

Do I think they will win here, not a chance Estonia looks like a team with a plan and they will catch Begium on a counter!!

Inplay prediction: Draw

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Off to see Portugal destroy Israel, hope Cr7 will be on the scoresheet

Just to be clear, if you think they're winning a trophy with Southgate as manager then, that's the area you get it all wrong. ( Yeah I know you didn't say so )
Garreth Southgate is the another Harry Maguire, they have nothing to offer, they're just being protected. They have a great squad but they can't win because they don't have a good shepherd to lead the sheep's. ( This ain't bout sheep's )

Great game yesterday by the way, beautiful goals and good team work. It's a game you can predict the end evens before the kick off.
In thr first half, they just lacked creativity, wasn't comfortable with the usage of Alexander Arnold as a midfielder. Southgate no different from these half baked coaches in Africa.Super Saka, Harry Kane and the rest of the squad...... Fantastic!

Belgium are still unable to make a big improvement in their general performance. Their win in their first match in the qualifiers made me think about if they were better as of then. However the point loss against Austria caused all of my curiosity to be gone all of a sudden. It was a really poor performance about even shots on goal - 2 out of 17. This very unbalanced look prevents me from thinking positive about their future in such big tournaments. After having a disappointing run in the World Cup a similar thing might happen in Euro 2024 as well.

But let's evaluate the situation match by match so tonight I hope to see them getting a comfortable win against Estonia to improve their morale.