“Finals are very difficult,” shrugged Fernando Santos, prodded with the still-being-absorbed shock of North Macedonia, rather than Italy, making it to face Portugal in Tuesday’s World Cup qualifying play-off final. “They are there to be won, and there’s nothing else to discuss.”
If those words fell from other lips they’d be cliché but the long-serving Portugal coach has earned his cautious demeanour, and he is wise to sense the mood of his countrymen – and not just because they flirted with sporting disaster in the second half of Thursday’s victory over Turkey in Porto, which ended up being way more tense than it probably should have been. It had been almost eight and a half years since Portugal needed a playoff to qualify for a major tournament finals, when Cristiano Ronaldo singlehandedly put away Sweden to send them to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, effectively winning himself the Ballon d’Or in the process.
