Preview: Portugal vs Poland

Both teams needed to go beyond normal time to qualify for this phase of the competition. Poland managed to win a penalty shootout against Switzerland, while Portugal scored a late goal in the extra time against Croatia.

Poland will definitely be considered as the favourites for this encounter since they are a team who showed better football throughout the last games. On the other hand, Portugal are still to win a game in normal time.

However, with players such as Christiano Ronaldo, they have shown that they can rise to the occasion and beat great teams. This was the case in their previous match against Croatia.

Despite possessing players such as Ronaldo, Poland know that if they are to go through for a historic semi-final, they should focus on Portugal as a team. This was also expressed by Poland’s manager, Adam Nawalka, who yesterday said that football is about team work and that there is no team in which one player decides the outcome of the match.

Portugal coach, Fernando Santos, argued that Poland are quite like Croatia and anticipated a balanced game. He also made reference to players who can make a difference at any moment in the game such as Lewandowski.

History is in favour of Portugal. Both teams played against each other ten times. Portugal won four games, while Poland won three. The remaining three matches ended up in a draw. These stats will sure make the game more interesting.

The referee of this match will be Felix Brych from Germany.