Portugal resolved with four goals, two of them from Cristiano Ronaldoin the first half hour his match as a visitor against Luxembourg that finished with a categorical 0-6, to add his second victory and lead the Group J of the qualifying round for Eurocopa Germany 2024.
After the 4-0 that endorsed liechtenstein last Thursday at the Jose Alvalade in Lisbon, the Luso team fulfilled the script against another more than modest team like the Luxembourger no matter how much he had tied against Slovakia at zero.
Roberto Martinez and his men know that these encounters before rivals so inferior they can become entangled if you do not enter with the necessary concentration and ambition. And so they did under the light rain of Luxembourg before the men of Luc Holtz, They gave a lot of facilities.
Three balls hung into the area and three goals in the space of nine minutes, between the 9th and the 18th. Match ended. Cristiano Ronaldo, youflush touch nuno mendes, opened the account at an empty door; joao felix finished off with a powerful header a shipment of Bernardo Silva and the fine player of Manchester City hooked another magnificent header on a delivery from Palhinha.
Three goals in three shots on goal for the Lusitanian team, whose Spanish strategist had made three changes to the starting eleven compared to the match against Liechtenstein, Antonio Silva by Gonçalo Inacio, Diego Dalot by Joao Cancelo and Nuno Mendes by Raphael Guerreiro.
Portugal did not relax. With the Spanish coach constantly giving instructions to his men, mainly in getting the ball out, good pressure after a throw-in ended, after 31 minutes, in the second goal from Cristiano Ronaldo. The current striker Al Nassr Saudi increased to four his account in two games and 122 in his career in the national team. At 38, he is still a mainstay for the ‘Quinas’.
Roberto MartÃnez gave Cristiano Ronaldo just over an hour. He had just been given a yellow card for feigning a foul and he opted to bring on Goncalo Ramos, his ‘replacement’ in the Qatar World Cup 2022 when the former coach Fernando Santos He chose not to line up the ex-Madridista. He also introduced Ruben Neves by Bernardo Silva to gain weight in the spinal cord.
Luxembourg, who made three substitutions at half-time, had significantly improved his performance and had begun to dominate possession and the game, a circumstance that was not disturbing for the Portuguese due to their tenderness and ineffectiveness in the rival area.
With a final half hour of processing, Portugal closed the process without problemswith two new goals coming off the bench, from otavio (77′) and Rafael Leão (88′), who shortly before had missed a maximum penalty committed on himself thanks to a great save from the goal Anthony Morris.
The balance is clear leadership with six points, ten goals for and none against fMeet the ‘Cinderellas’ of the group. In the next official ‘window’, in June, she has more theoretically difficult commitments, before Bosnia and Herzegovina at home and Iceland at home
(With information from EFE)