Norway vs Portugal – Euro 2012 

Norway is one of the main candidates of this group to qualify for Euro 2012, so one of our main rivals. Although it didn’t play in the World Cup it’s a pretty strong team with good players up front who can easily make the difference, as happened last game. Against Iceland, Norway began losing, showing some defensive errors and some instability, however, the strong attack compensates for the lower quality defense, and managed to win the game.

However, for this game, there’s a very important player who will not play, John Arne Riise, the left wingback of the Norwegian team, was injured and won’t be able to play against Portugal, and any player that replaces him will never fulfill his role, Riise has a great quality, and makes the entire left wing, so this is good news for Portugal. Some notes for this game, which the coach has already talked about, Norway has only lost one of the last 36 games at home, and Carew remembered that Norway is very motivated for this game, after the victory, and finishing the opening round in first place, with six points is a great leap for qualifying.

Portugal started badly, and frankly, the game against Cyprus just gave me to laugh. The Portuguese defense made ridiculous mistakes that Cyprus took advantage of, and a draw against Cyprus is pretty bad and demoralizing. Seeing the game, we learned that we still have much to learn in the defense, we commited several errors in dangerous zones, and the players were too slow in counter-attack situations, which is pretty bad. As for the attack, one can say that it is good, although it was against Cyprus, we managed to score four goals, and beautiful goals, from collective and individual techniques, which demonstrates that we are strong in the attack.

For this game, there can be some surprises, as in the last game we suffered too many goals, Agostinho changed the wingbacks in the last training session, putting Miguel Veloso and Silvio, instead of Fabio Coentrão that sustained and injury, and Miguel, who played poorly against Cyprus. Danny can also lose his place, according to Record, and I believe that Moutinho will take the place as the organizer as he is in great form in Porto, in the same position, and I believe will add value to the Portuguese team and that he will bring more organization to the Portuguese attack.

Prediction: I’m pretty skeptical about Portugal’s exhibition, and this game is quite unpredictable. So I think it is best to bet on goals. Both Norway and Portugal showed a very porous defense, and a very strong attack, with good strikers, I can see the Over in this game, if either side scores, there will always be a strong response from the other side, because no one wants to lose this game, and only victory matters, so that the team comes out of this round motivated, which is very important.