Portugal gets their preparation for Russia 2018 underway with this friendly match against Tunisia who are also headed for the world football showpiece. One player who would be missing this game is Christiano Ronaldo who helped Real Madrid to win their third consecutive Champions League title in Kyiv on Saturday. Going by how important he would be to Portugal in the World Cup, we feel they should have waited a little longer so he can join them.
This game offers the Portuguese the chance to give some of their up-and-coming players the chance to impress, however, they risk coming off as a one-man team here and in the competition when it begins if the next generation fails to kick on in this game. They play Morocco in the finals, and they would be hoping Tunisia can help them understand how the North Africans would play.
Tunisia would be playing against England and Belgium in Russia and they see this game as one to help them play the Europeans when the competition begins. We expect them to defend deep in this game and that would see the Portuguese struggle as they seem to be very blunt in their attack when C. Ronaldo does not play for them.
Ronaldo scored almost half of Portugal’s 32 goals in the qualifiers with 15, he and Andre Silva netted a combined 25 goals for the European champions. Silva, however, would struggle to lead the attack without Ronaldo after coming into this summer off the back of a poor first season in Milan.
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