Manchester United duo Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot were involved in Portugal’s final friendly game before Euro 2024, which was labelled a ‘disaster’ by Portuguese media.
Portugal is one of the favourites to win Euro 2024, but similar to England, they won’t have felt particularly confident after their final match before the campaign began.
In the warm-up match, Croatia defeated Roberto Martinez’s team 2-1, sending the former losing. Luka Modric scored the first goal from a penalty kick, but Diogo Jota of Liverpool equalised in the 48th minute.
However, Croatia took the lead again, as Ante Budimir scored the winning goal eight minutes later. Bruno and Dalot did not have a decent runout, and the Portuguese media concurred.
Portuguese media react to Portugal vs Croatia
The Portuguese media instantly reacted to the shock result. Outlet Abola had a lot to say about the performance involving two Manchester United men.
They wrote: ‘Roberto Martínez wanted to present an eleven that was already very close to the definitive one. The choices didn’t even seem too questionable. Rúben Dias and Gonçalo Inácio as centre-backs, Diogo Dalot and Muno Mendes as more reliable full-backs to defend, Palhinha as the master key to the door of the area, Vitinha and Bruno Fernandes in midfield, Bernardo Silva, Gonçalo Ramos and João Félix in the advanced trident, with Bernardo and Félix playing inside and opening spaces on the wings for the full-backs.’
‘It was a disaster. Trying not to lose its main identity of always having a lot of possession, the team became repetitive, indolent and, therefore, too predictable in attack and totally disjointed in the defensive process, opening immense spaces through which a real invasion of Croatians entered. And if it is true that Portugal almost started the game losing, in a penalty that seemed very debatable to us, it is also true that Croatia added, throughout the first half, an endless number of missed chances, while the Portuguese team failed to create a single shot of real danger for Livakovic.’
‘Martínez realized that one of the biggest problems of his national team was, precisely, the total lack of dynamics, both in the offensive involvement and in the defensive recovery. And he will have understood that the issue was not one of the system, but of the players. Dalot and Nuno Mendes didn’t use their playing space on the wings well and João Félix and Gonçalo Ramos were sleepy forwards in the game. Changed all four. Portugal started to have two more dynamic full-backs, with Nelson Semedo and João Cancelo (he doesn’t have the same influence on the left side) and gained intensity with Diogo Jota and speed with Rafael Leão.’
‘The team improved the offensive dynamics, unbalanced, and restless and finally got opportunities to score. However, he maintained the same defensive fragility. Not so much because of their defence, but because of a blatant inability to collectively understand how they should act effectively in the defensive process when the team loses the ball in advanced areas of the pitch. A problem that becomes more disturbing, because it has dragged on in time and games. So far no other team than a huge Diogo Costa.’
How Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot played for Portugal
Dalot and Bruno weren’t exactly the stand-out performers, but they weren’t exactly detrimental to the international sides’ loss.
Bruno Fernandes
- 70 minutes
- 0 goals
- 0 assists
- 43/49 accurate passes (88%)
- 1 chance created
- 68 touches
- 1/2 successful dribbles
- 4/6 accurate long balls
- 2/2 tackles won (100%)
- 4 duels won
- 7.2 rating
Diogo Dalot
- 46 minutes
- 0 goals
- 0 assists
- 25/26 accurate passes (96%)
- 1 chances created
- 37 touches
- 1/1 tackles won (100%)
- 0 times dispossessed
- 6.6 rating
Sourced from FOTMOB.
Portugal face the Czech Republic on Tuesday the 18th of June in their opener, the last team to play in the tournament. Bruno and Dalot will be hoping for a better performance, and result in that clash.
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