Iberians must be sick of the sight of Salvador. In the stadium where Spain were routed by Holland last week Portugal suffered the same fate against Germany, getting their campaign off to the worst possible start by shipping four goals and seeing Pepe dismissed in the first half.
The Germans were good, as they usually are, and Thomas Müller was well worth his hat-trick, though long before the interval the story was one of Portuguese disintegration. Paulo Bento’s side made life easy for Germany with a series of defensive mistakes even before Pepe’s complete lack of professionalism turned a much anticipated contest into a one-sided procession.
“It was not as intense a match as we had anticipated,” Joachim Löw said with some understatement. Angela Merkel made the long journey from Europe and turned up in the German dressing room afterwards to tell the players their performance had made her trip worthwhile, though privately she must have hoped to see more of a match.
In terms of a contest, spectators were entertained for about 20 minutes. Ronaldo nonchalently set up the first chance of the game by wafting the ball in Hugo Almeida’s direction to find him in clear space after five minutes, only for the striker to fail to either accelerate or shoot promptly enough and allow Mats Hummels to come across and block. Further encouragement for Portugal came when Miguel Veloso’s persistence saw him dispossess Philipp Lahm to create an opening for Ronaldo that was also cleared, though the closest the game came to a goal from open play in the early stages was when Sami Khedira returned Rui Patrício’s sloppy clearance and saw his snap shot miss an undefended target by a couple of feet.
The opening goal arrived shortly after wards from the penalty spot, Müller beating Patrício low to his right after Joao Pereira was booked for wrestling Mario Götze to the floor in the penalty area. That makes the incident sound a little more dramatic than it actually was: Götze threw himself to the ground in the end, though as the Portugal right-back was clearly using his arms to impede his progress he was probably entitled to do so.
Written by Unknown
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