Portugal may have been the losing side of last night’s friendly against England at Wembley stadium, but it’s no surprise English fans and media were more frustrated than anyone else with the uninspired show of football, just around a week before the start of the Euro 2016 in France.
Chris Smalling headed home the winning goal four minutes away from the final whistle, after seeing his team struggle the whole match to create scoring opportunities against a team reduced to 10 players after a barbaric tackle by centre-back Bruno Alves 35 minutes into the match.
But as Alex Netherton from Yahoo! Sport pointed out, “few could blame Alves for skipping the second half”.
Both teams seemed more worried about avoiding injuries and managing fitness levels than actually trying to score, and that made for a highly uninteresting match to watch with virtually no goal attempts from either side.
But while English media is ablaze with England’s “lack of imagination” and how Hodgson is still experimenting new tactics so late into their preparation for the Euro, Portuguese media and fans were more forgiving.
Portugal did put on an impressive defensive display, preventing England from creating any truly noteworthy scoring chances, though to be fair they were almost non-existing offensively.
Still, manager Fernando Santos was without his shining star Cristiano Ronaldo and defensive leader Pepe apart from seeing Bruno Alves sent off in the first half.
At the end of the day, neither team was fully satisfied with their performance. And the Euro is just a few days away…
England will face Russia on June 11 for their first Euro 2016 clash in France, while Portugal still has one more friendly against Estonia on Wednesday (June 8) in Estádio da Luz.
