“Switzerland? Portugal will have to practice its best football to move on to the quarters″
Portugal, who won Group H, face Switzerland, vice-leader of poule G, on Tuesday, at 10:00 pm local time (7:00 pm in Lisbon), in Lusail, Qatar, in the final duel of the round of 16 of Mundial’2022.
Portugal needs to be “very competent at a mental, physical, tactical and strategic level” to face Switzerland on Tuesday, in the round of 16 of the 2022 Mundial, warns Portuguese footballer Tomás Ribeiro, from the Swiss side of Grasshoppers.
“Portugal can expect a very difficult game, because Switzerland have proven to be a very competitive and competent team at different times. They feel comfortable at centre-back, are very compact and have very experienced players in their core. his best football to move on to the next stage”, analyzed the defender to the Lusa agency, doing his second season for the seventh place in the Swiss League.
Portugal, who won Group H, face Switzerland, vice-leader of poule G, on Tuesday, at 22:00 local time (19:00 in Lisbon), in Lusail, Qatar, in the final duel of the round of 16 of the main debutante competition, whose 22nd edition will run until December 18th.
“As favoritism is theoretically more on our side, it is likely that Portugal can enter into an attacking mood and with more ball, while Switzerland tries to understand which spaces they can best take advantage of. Now, depending on how the game is going, and if Portugal fails to score in the first few minutes, Switzerland also has all the conditions to react and take over operations with the ball”, he reiterated.
If the Quinas team wants the third presence in the “quarters” of the World Cup, after 1966 and 2006, in a total of eight final stages, “nati” seeks to reintegrate the cast of eight finalists as in 1934, 1938 and 1954, which were best performances in 12 participations.
“As an ambitious team that they are sure to be, Switzerland always want to go as far as possible, but I also believe that they know that at this precise moment they are facing a very difficult opponent and will be thinking game by game and not in reaching a final, although that is always the objective. Now, I think that everything they manage to achieve beyond having passed the group stage is already very good”, assured Tomás Ribeiro.
The 23-year-old defense remembers that Switzerland “created many problems for the three cards” in Group G, in qualifying they beat Cameroon (1-0) and Serbia (3-2) and lost to five-time champion Brazil (0-1) , after having dominated Group C of the European qualifying phase, ahead of continental champions Italy, who then fell out of the play-off to access the 2022 Mundial.
“As they say in football, motivation before big games is always easier to pass on among footballers, also because the pressure is a little on the other side. That is, it ends up messing with the team. [teoricamente menos favorita]🇧🇷 Of course, having already very anxious players, Switzerland will easily pass on that message for a great game against a great team like Portugal”, he pointed out.
Tomás Ribeiro reiterates the “great quality as a team” of the Swiss, who also knocked out world champions France in the round of 16 of Euro’2020, held in 2021, in the penalty shoot-out, through which they would concede to Spain in the quarters.
“It has a lot to do with [a presença de] players who have already passed or who are at the top. They separate very well the moments of going up to the opponent and being a little more expectant. In Friday’s game against Serbia, Switzerland were very calm in defense, but when they had to react and turn the score around, they did it with the utmost naturalness. The team is free to assume one role or another”, noted.
Striker Breel Embolo (Monaco) “has had a wonderful World Cup and creates problems for the opposing defences”, standing out with two goals in a selection “stuffed with players of immense experience and name”, as attested by midfielder and captain Granit Xhaka (Arsenal), center Manuel Akanji (Manchester City) or winger Xherdan Shaqiri (Chicago Fire).
“They don’t lack good individualities, but if we go to talk about it, we can also say that our team is full of them. Firstly, I think that the game will pull much more for the collectives, and, sometimes, the individual can stand out . Portugal has to be very focused on each shot”, noted Tomás Ribeiro, with two goals in 13 matches in 2022/23 for Grasshoppers, which he arrived from B SAD.
With no history of clashes in the final stages of World Cups, Portugal and Switzerland met in a double dose in June for Group A2 of the League of Nations, with a brace by captain Cristiano Ronaldo and 10 by William Carvalho and João Cancelo to build the Portuguese rout in Lisbon (4-0), seven days before a solitary goal by Haris Seferović, loaned by Benfica to Turkish side Galatasaray, dictated Switzerland’s success in the Geneva clash (0-1).
“If there’s one thing that football has always shown us, it’s that every game is different. Above all, Portugal will have to start very well, knowing that a very good entry into the field can sometimes define the course of the game. recent events will only give some parameters for the two teams to study each other better”, he concluded.