Repeated mistakes doom Portugal

I have to tell you that, as a native of Portugal, I was completely distraught over the country's dismal performance against the United States. Distraught, but not totally surprised. In my mind, there were three simple reasons why the Portuguese lost: bad coaching decisions, lack of preparation and the improvement of U.S. soccer.

When I was doing my online preview of Portugal's chances for the World Cup about 10 months ago, I wrote that the nation's chances in the competition depended on what manager Antonio Oliveira decided to do. Well, as I feared, he made all the wrong decisions. First, he ignored the goalkeeper who was stellar during qualifying, Ricardo, to put in the terribly irregular Vitor Baia. We all saw the result as the Porto keeper struggled to hold even the easiest of crosses.

Then, Oliveira decided to experiment on the right of defense by placing centerback Beto in that position. The Sporting man didn't play badly, but struggled to keep up with DaMarcus Beasley. Last, but not least, Oliveira elected to play with only one striker, and he stayed with only one striker until 10 minutes from the end. Nuno Gomes came on too late and had no chances of changing the course of the game.

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As silly as it may seem, I was actually expecting these things to happen. Why? Because in qualifying, the same mistakes were made, especially the one of keeping Nuno Gomes on the sidelines. Portugal was losing 2-0 at home to Holland, 1-0 away to Cyprus and drawing with Andorra before Gomes came on to save the day.

Now the problem of preparation is quite a curious one. For some reason, the Portuguese Football Federation decided to keep the players in Macau until last Thursday. Yes, it may have been relaxing there, but it didn't give the squad a lot of time to adapt to South Korea before they took on the United States in Suwon. The result? They looked out of sorts, and from the stands it seemed they weren't psychologically ready to go into battle.

Finally, I must say a word about the American team. They played like true warriors and were able to exploit all the weaknesses of the Portuguese side. They were quicker to every ball, more committed in their tackles and more determined to win the match. They showed that the U.S. can play the sport at the highest level and that the nation has a crop of very promising youngsters. Congratulations to Bruce Arena and his players, because they deserved their victory.

About Portugal's future matches, what can I say? My heart leads me to believe they can still progress, while my mind argues that if they haven't learned from their mistakes until now, when will they learn?

 

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