Jonathan Liew was at Leipzig Stadium tonight. His report is in. Thanks for reading this MBM. Nighty night.
After a dramatic and highly entertaining day in Germany – this one was a bit of a slow burner but we got there in the end – Group F looks like this. All four sides brought something to the party.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2 | Portugal | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| 3 | Czech Republic | 1 | -1 | 0 |
| 4 | Georgia | 1 | -2 | 0 |
A strange match to parse, that one. Portugal were the better side on balance, much more threatening over the piece, without ever really hitting their straps. But both of their goals featured an element of good fortune, Jindřich Staněk clanking the ball off Robin Hranáč’s leg for the first, the ill-fated Hranáč slipping to inadvertently tee up Francisco Conceição for the late winner. Then again, when you do most of the pressing, you’re going to get more of the breaks. The Czechs fought well and that will give them succour; Portugal will be delighted with a dramatic win, knowing they can play much better.
FULL TIME: Portugal 2-1 Czech Republic
Ronaldo screams in delight as the final whistle goes! Portugal have won it at the death!
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90 min +3: Tomáš Chorý comes on for Tomáš Holeš. Barák shovels a pass down the inside-right channel. Lingr attempts to dink a header over Costa and into the top left, but the ball’s always heading over the bar and the flag goes up for offside anyway.
GOAL! Portugal 2-1 Czech Republic (Conceição 90+2)
Portugal weren’t to be denied! Pedro Neto steals the ball on the left wing and romps into the box. He crosses low, dangerously so. Hranáč attempts to intercept, but slips and can only tee up Francisco Conceição, making his competitive debut and only just on, six yards out. Conceição can’t miss! The winner!
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90 min: There will be four added minutes.
89 min: Vitinha, Nuno Mendes and João Cancelo and are replaced by Nélson Semedo, Pedro Neto and Francisco Conceição.
NO GOAL! Portugal 1-1 Czech Republic
VAR rules the goal out in double-quick time! Ronaldo was a few inches offside as he won the first header. Had he cut his toenails last night, or perhaps worn a thinner vest under his shirt, he might have been on. It was that close!
GOAL! Portugal 2-1 Czech Republic (Jota 87)
A cross whipped in from the right by João Cancelo. Ronaldo rises high at the far stick, and plants a header across Staněk and off the right-hand post. The ball pings back to Jota, who plants a header into the right-hand side of the net. What a header by Ronaldo, and what reaction by Jota!
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85 min: Jota nearly gets the better of Hranáč down the left, but just when he looks to have wrestled clear, the defender gets back to block and put a stop to the attack.
83 min: The pace drops a little bit as everyone takes a little more care with everything they do. Nobody wants to lose this now.
81 min: … so having said that Portugal look the more likely, it’s the Czechs who carve out the next half-chance. A ball cut back from the byline on the right is met by Ševčík on the penalty spot. He’s falling backwards and can’t get any purchase on the shot. The ball’s blocked and breaks to Souček, who drags a weak shot wide right from the edge of the box.
80 min: Another Czech double change, as Antonín Barák and Petr Ševčík replace Pavel Šulc and the goalscorer Lukáš Provod.
78 min: Vitinha sends a daisycutter towards the bottom left. Staněk turns it around the post. Fernandes takes the corner … and it flies over everyone’s head. He’s not been on it with the old dead balls tonight.
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77 min: Just as Portugal were visibly rattled in the wake of the opening goal, so the Czechs appear despondent after that own goal. Suddenly they look a yard slower, with Portugal first to mostly everything, and looking the most likely again. Meanwhile on the subject of all these long-range goals, here’s Niall Mullen: “Is it me or has there been no complaining about the tournament ball? Usually keepers, pundits, and set-piece merchants line up to condemn the random flight of a new innovative ball with special flyaway technology. This time the players seem to just want to hammer it into the net, repeatedly. Maybe they should stick with this one in perpetuity?”
75 min: A long pass looks like releasing Ronaldo down the left … but he’s not got the pace and the flag pops up for offside anyway. “Long range screamers,” begins Charles Antaki. “That’s what we want: long range screamers. Even if it ends now, Euro 2024 has delivered.”
73 min: To be fair to Portugal, the cross was decent, Nuno Mendes competed well to win the header, and Ronaldo forced the error by lurking. But it was still a clumsy mistake by Staněk. Anyway, here we are now, with Portuguese tails up, and Silva has a batter from the edge of the box. The keeper does much better this time to block.
71 min: That was more Staněk’s fault than Hranáč’s, but it’s the defender’s name on the scoresheet. The goal was met with almost total silence for a nanosecond, as the entire ground tried to work out what had happened. Then a roar from the Portugal fans as the truth became clear. A big stroke of good fortune for Portugal; a self-inflicted wound for the Czechs.
GOAL! Portugal 1-1 Czech Republic (Hranáč 69 og)
A cross comes in from the right. Nuno Mendes, at the far post, heads down and across goal. Staněk parries at the feet of Hranáč, pushing the ball onto the defender’s leg. Hranáč can do nothing about it as the ball pings off him and past his own keeper. All in slow motion.
Updated
68 min: Provod’s screamer was the Czech’s first shot on target, and is the 11th from outside the box so far this tournament. “Czechia take the lead against the run of play. And in the crowd, the Czechs are bouncing. Here all week, try the Svíčková.” Gary Byrne, there, ladies and gentlemen, doing most of my work for me.
66 min: Jota’s first act is to high-kick Provod in the head. Take that for scoring against us.
65 min: On the touchline, Roberto Martinez performs the internationally recognised palms-down mime for CALM DOWN. Portugal certainly look rattled.
64 min: Portugal immediately respond with a double change. Rafael Leão and Diogo Dalot are replaced by Gonçalo Inácio and Diogo Jota.
GOAL! Portugal 0-1 Czech Republic (Provod 62)
Well, this was worth waiting for! Portugal have had all the possession, but it’s the Czechs who take the lead! Douděra chases what looks like a lost cause down the left. He gets the ball and crosses long. Coufal gathers on the right and cuts back for Provod, who takes a touch before steering a screamer across Costa and into the left-hand side of the goal! What a strike!
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61 min: Czechia make a double change. Mojmír Chytil and Ondřej Lingr come on for Jan Kuchta and the misfiring – and freshly booked – Patrik Schick.
59 min: João Cancelo releases Bernardo Silva down the inside-right channel. He opts to cross low instead of shooting, hoping to find Ronaldo. Hranáč slides in to intercept at the cost of a corner, from which, you know the score by now, nothing occurs.
58 min: This free kick is in officially designated Ronaldo Territory™. He pelts goalwards. The ball swerves this way and that, yet somehow flies straight at Staněk, who gathers.
Updated
57 min: Schick flips João Cancelo into the air like a pancake, and it’s a free kick from a central position, 25 yards out. A yellow card for Schick, too.
56 min: Ronaldo again pulls his neck back with a view to planting a header goalwards, but Coufal steps in and eyebrows away just in time. Then Staněk has to claw the ball away from the middle of a crowded box. Portugal are beginning to cause the Czechs problems.
55 min: Ronaldo attempts to do exactly that, but upon meeting Dias’s right-wing cross, his header is deflected over the bar, and nothing comes of the resulting corner.
54 min: Czechia continue to sit happily along the front of their own box. No way in for Portugal. Nothing much happening, so Joe Pearson’s mind drifts away to Portugal’s star striker: “Sure you can score with ease in Riyadh, but can you do it on a rainy Tuesday night in Leipzig?”
52 min: Silva sashays in from the right and Dalots a curling shot over the bar. This match really hasn’t got going at all.
50 min: The rain is coming down fairly hard in Leipzig. It’s nothing compared to the Dortmund squall of earlier, but you wouldn’t want to be caught out in it without a brolly.
48 min: Fernandes slips a cute pass down the right for Silva, who digs out a cross on the byline, just in time to win a corner off Krejčí. The set piece is worked back to Vitinha, whose cross-cum-shot is no good whatsoever, sailing miles over the bar. He sticks up a hand of apology to his team-mates.
46 min: Dalot drops a shoulder to glide infield from the right and aims a curler towards the top left. It’s always going over, but it was a decent effort nonetheless. Had it been on target, Staněk might have been in trouble.
The Czech Republic get the second half underway. No changes. “I hope you’re happy with yourself with that ‘ctrl+jinx’ no-goalless-games-thus-far pre-game talk,” begins Jon Collin, because somebody had to clip me around the lug for it. “If only this Portugal team had some firepower and/or options from the bench, they’d surely be contenders. Where’s Eder?”
Half-time advertisement. More hot MBM action here, this time tomorrow night!
HALF TIME: Portugal 0-0 Czech Republic
Portugal have been the better side; as tonight’s underdogs, Czechia will be the happier one. The goalkeepers haven’t had very much to do.
45 min: Leão teases Coufal down the left again. He reaches the byline and cuts back for Fernandes, but Holeš is covering and hacks out for a corner. And something happens at this one, Ronaldo making some space and time just inside the box to have a lash at goal. Straight at Staněk, who parries well.
44 min: … and eventually Nuno Mendes, in an attempt to force something into happening, shovels a pass down the inside-left channel to absolutely nobody. Goal kick.
43 min: Portugal pass it around patiently. They go nowhere.
41 min: Coufal intercepts with Portugal faffing around. Portugal have committed a lot of men to the attack, but all of the other Czech players are sitting back, and Coufal has nobody to pass to. Eventually Schick appears, but upon receiving the ball, he quickly loses it. Poor Coufal, whose efforts deserved better support.
39 min: Coufal finds a bit of space on the overlap down the right. He crosses for Schick, who can’t connect with his header, six yards out. Dias clears instead. Portugal counter, with Leão attempting to steam past Coufal on the left, just outside the box. He goes over … and is booked for simulation. There wasn’t much contact, that’s for sure. A strange decision to go over, because it looked like he’d got past his man.
37 min: The Czech captain Souček goes down, holding his right leg. Play stops awhile. Then he springs up again. A professional pause to break up the momentum Portugal had been building?
35 min: Leão again sails past Coufal down the left with absurd ease. And again, there’s no quality in the cross. Portugal are finding the final ball a bit of a struggle.
33 min: Ronaldo’s clever back-heel allows Vitinha to barrel into the Czech box down the inside-left channel. His presence wins a corner. It’s headed clear. Portugal asking all of the questions.
32 min: Bruno Fernandes splits the Czech defence down the middle, his low pass finding Ronaldo, who attempts to spin and guide a first-time shot towards the bottom right. Staněk, sliding in, sticks up a strong arm to save. Sensational! Mind you, had it gone in, VAR would almost certainly have chalked it off for offside.
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30 min: The Czechs are beginning to make daft mistakes. Coufal ships possession and Nuno Mendes makes good down the left … but the cross sails away from all of his team-mates in the middle. Goal kick.
29 min: Douděra, facing his own goal, elegantly chests down a left-wing cross for his keeper to collect. Great, calm defending, but Staněk carelessly mishandles and the ball goes out for a corner. Czechia are lucky the chest-down wasn’t on target, and that Portugal again deliver a non-event of a corner.
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28 min: Holeš is closed down in the centre circle and for a second it looks as though Portugal will launch a three-on-one break. Holeš is fortunate his partner Hranáč is on hand to blooter the loose ball clear before things get dangerous.
26 min: Schick’s cute reverse pass down the left finds Šulc, who has the opportunity to shoot from long range but takes too long in thinking about it. Once he’s dispossessed, Portugal counter at speed, Fernandes swinging a low cross in from the right. Leão extends a leg but somehow fails to connect to poke home. The Czechs get away with one there.
Updated
24 min: Fernandes is afforded too much time and space out on the left wing, and he saunters infield to shoot from distance. Another deflection, this effort sailing over the bar. Another wasted corner.
22 min: Ronaldo probes down the left. Nothing doing. He cuts back for Vitinha, who rolls across the face of the box towards the in-rushing Dias. A first-time shot is deflected wide right for a corner. Nothing comes of it. Portugal look by far the more likely to open the scoring, even if they’ve not actually put Staněk to work yet.
20 min: This corner’s a waste of time as well.
19 min: Nuno Mendes again, but this time he’s elegantly swishing down the middle of the park, pushing Czechia back. Bruno Fernandes whips dangerously in from the right, forcing Coufal to head behind for another Portugal corner.
17 min: … so Nuno Mendes reaches the end of his tether and lashes an impatient shot from a daft distance. High and wide. The Czechs perfectly happy about that, and it’s far too early for Portugal to be getting frustrated.
16 min: Portugal pass the ball hither and yon. No way through. Six white shirts lined up along the edge of the area.
14 min: Souček comes through the back of Bruno Fernandes when contesting a high ball. A garden-variety foul in the midfield and a free kick. Fernandes not happy, and not slow in giving both Souček and the referee the what-for. They pretty much ignore him.
12 min: Leão jinks past Coufal down the left with absurd ease. He reaches the byline but miscontrols before he can cut the ball back for Ronaldo. The Czechs clear their lines.
10 min: Portugal are seeing most of the ball. The Czechs happy enough to sit back and soak things up. Then suddenly a long pass down the Czech right for Provod, who makes it past a lumbering Pepe only to carelessly clank the ball out for a goal kick. Portugal momentarily exposed there.
8 min: Leão latches onto a loose ball in midfield and races down the left. He chops infield and crosses, and this time there’s somebody in red there: it’s Ronaldo, whose first touch of the evening, a header, goes wide left. Portugal again looking dangerous down the left.
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6 min: Nuno Mendes slips a pass down the left in the hope of springing Leão clear. Hranac is forced to slide in and concede a corner. Nothing comes of the set piece, but Portugal have now launched three promising attacks down this wing.
4 min: More space for Portugal down the left. This time it’s Bruno Fernandes who loops a cross into an otherwise empty box. The Czechs counter and Šulc tries to work some space to shoot by the left-hand edge of the Portuguese D. He’s crowded out before he can take a whack.
3 min: Leão and Fernandes exchange passes down the inside-left channel, the latter then releasing Bernardo Silva into the box. Silva crosses to nobody in particular and the ball sails out for a goal kick. Both teams looking lively in these very early exchanges.
1 min: The Czechs on the front foot early doors, with Schick and Souček making a nuisance of themselves down the right. For a second it looks as though they’ve combined to open Portugal up, but the ball rolls out for a goal kick.
Portugal get the ball rolling. If this is half as good as the Turkey-Georgia show, we’ll be doing very well. Goals, please!
Cristiano Ronaldo may be pushing 40, but he wore the bubbly expression of a super-excited teenager during the Portuguese anthem. A huge grin playing across his face as he belted out the lyrics. Then a lusty scream of COME ON! All signs are that he’s well up for this.
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The teams are out! Plenty of noise and passion at the RB Arena. Portugal in red with green-and-black edging, Czechia in white with blue trim. Anthems are sung: paeans to the voice of distinguished forefathers that shall lead Portugal to victory, of the pinewoods rustling among the rocks in the beautiful Czech homeland, a paradise on earth no less. Some positive branding right there. We’ll be off in a couple of minutes, once pennants are exchanged and coins are tossed.
In the meantime, here’s a prediction from John Moloney: “The refereeing has been pretty good so far, would you say? I wonder how much the new rules about who is allowed to whine and harass the referee have helped - seems to me they are working quite well so far. But tonight is the acid test, surely? Bruno Fernandes, without the captain’s get-out-of-jail-free card, is going to last about 15 minutes, isn’t he? Looking forward to seeing what happens already.”
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The first wave of group fixtures comes to an end here, and as of now there still hasn’t been a goalless game. Hopefully we can complete the set without a blemish, and the fact the lines are being led tonight by Cristiano Ronaldo and Patrik Schick augurs well: the pair were the joint top scorers last time round at Euro 2020. Ronaldo won the Golden Boot by dint of one extra assist.
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Earlier today in Group F, this happened …
… in which Arda Güler of Turkey broke Cristiano Ronaldo’s 20-year-old record to become the youngest player to score on their Euro finals debut. The ‘Turkish Messi’ is 19 years and 114 days old; Ronaldo was a comparatively creaky 19 years and 128 days when he scored a late consolation against Greece in the opener of Euro 2004. It all means the group looks like this ahead of tonight’s game in Leipzig.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2 | Czech Republic | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | Portugal | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Georgia | 1 | -2 | 0 |
Both of these countries have identical records at the business end of the Euros. Portugal won the title in 2016 and were runners-up in 2004; the Czechs came second in 1996 and lifted the trophy (as Czechoslovakia) in 1976. The Portuguese have the upper hand in the head-to-head since the Czech Republic became a separate country, though. Karel Poborský’s famous scoop decided the Euro 96 quarter-final, but since then it’s been four wins in a row for Portugal, at Euro 2008, Euro 2012 and in the 2022-23 Nations League.
Cristiano Ronaldo (39) and Pepe (41) start for Portugal. Both break records tonight: Ronaldo will appear in his sixth European Championship finals, while Pepe, at 41 years and 113 days, becomes the oldest player in the 64-year history of the tournament. Pepe will beat the record held by Gabor Kiraly, who was 40 years and 86 days old when keeping goal for Hungary in their Euro 2016 last-16 defeat by Belgium. Manchester City are represented by Bernardo Silva and Rúben Dias, Manchester United by Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot.
West Ham midfielder Tomáš Souček captains the Czechs. Like City and United, the Hammers have two players starting tonight’s match: Vladimír Coufal lines up on the right-hand side of midfield.
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The teams
Portugal: Costa, Dias, Pepe, Nuno Mendes, Dalot, Bruno Fernandes, Vitinha, Joao Cancelo, Bernardo Silva, Ronaldo, Leao.
Subs: Rui Patricio, Nelson Semedo, Joao Palhinha, Goncalo Ramos, Joao Felix, Jose Sa, Danilo Pereira, Inacio, Joao Neves, Matheus Luiz, Ruben Neves, Jota, Silva, Pedro Neto, Francisco Conceicao.
Czech Republic: Stanek, Hranac, Krejci, Holes, Soucek, Coufal, Provod, Sulc, Doudera, Schick, Kuchta.
Subs: Zima, Vitik, Barak, Sevcik, Hlozek, Chytil, David Jurasek, Kovar, Cerny, Chory, Lingr, Cerv, Jaros, Vlcek, Matej Jurasek.
Referee: Marco Guida (Italy).
Preamble
The opening wave of fixtures concludes as Portugal and the Czech Republic finally get a kick of the ball. Should be good. It gets underway at 8pm. It’s on.
