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Portugal gave Cristiano Ronaldo a vacation and leaves a pending issue for September, with no possibility of error in their League of Nations group, now led by Spain. There is hardly any margin for error left for the team led by Fernando Santos, defeated by Switzerland, who opened their points tally after three consecutive fiascoes that had aroused some concern in the team, a malaise that was reflected in the way they faced a match to which many of its players showed up with a feeling of revenge.
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1
Jonas Omlin, Manuel Akanji, Ricardo Rodriguez (Leonidas Stergiou, 78 mins), Elvedi, Widmer (Renato Steffen, 45 mins), Djibril Sow (Michel Aebischer, 78 mins), Freuler, Xhaka, Embolo (Zuber, mins). 64), Seferovic and Shaqiri (Noah Okafor, 21 mins)
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0
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Rui Patrício, Cancelo, Nuno Mendes, Pepe, Danilo Pereira, Ruben Neves (Horta, min. 81), Bruno Fernandes (Matheus, min. 73), Vitor Ferreira (Bernardo Silva, min. 61), Rafael Leao (Diogo Jota, min. 61), André Silva and Otavinho (Gonçalo Guedes, min. 45)
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goals 1-0 min. 0: Seferovic.
Yellow cards Danilo Pereira (min. 12), Widmer (min. 33), Cancelo (min. 58) and Jonas Omlin (min. 79)
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The Portuguese arrived late to the meeting. It was the last one of the season and the deckchair could be seen in the background, but they soon realized that their rival was not on the beach. In the first minute they fell into a Swiss ambush, which wove a web to recover the ball and find a superiority on the left flank of the Portuguese defense. Raphael Guerreiro was not there, also released by his coach to pack his bags ahead of time. Bruno Fernandes’s help to Nuno Mendes came late and Widmer had time and space to get a precise cross that Seferovic headed into the net.
Portugal did not engage gears until a quarter of an hour had passed. In between, it could have ended up more damaged if the video arbitration had not traced a previous foul by Elvedi in the action prior to a penalty signaled by Nuno Mendes. Without the ball, without the ability to recover it, he was unable to connect with Bruno Fernandes and without that flashlight there was no light. But everything began to look less awkward when Danilo Pereira caught a continuity after a corner kick that forced goalkeeper Omlin to squeeze on the goal line. Almost immediately Rafael Leão scored a goal disallowed by André Silva’s offside position at the start of the play.
Switzerland, a team with Germanic fur, had approached the game as an exchange of blows, a game of transitions to which Portugal ended up appearing and even more so when Santos removed his most irrelevant footballers from the field, including the now highly valued Rafael Leão. With Bernardo Silva the team was something else. The Swiss, who never stopped coming to pressure and galloping, took more precautions. They found Omlin again, the Gallic Montpellier goalkeeper, feline to become huge in an option to Guedes, after denying the goal to a good header by Diogo Jota and even taking out without much orthodoxy a last attempt by Pepe.
Portugal had a push, supported in the stands by thousands of countrymen who feel the country since emigration. But she lacked concreteness to take the tie that, without a doubt, she deserved. Bruno left early, exhausted when his mix with Bernardo promised an interesting production inside. He lacked above all shot, but the only news that there was this Sunday of Cristiano Ronaldo was that of a photo that was taken inside an elevator and that he published on Instagram.
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