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Done. 3 Points. On to the next.

The best thing that can be said about this game is “we won” everything else was looked at in utter disbelief.

I must be completely oblivious to what exactly Hungary needed to keep alive any hope on qualifying for this worldcup because it looked like they couldn’t care less about the result and any outcome, except loosing to Portugal would be a major victory! And when we scored they changed there objective to “not loosing to Portugal by more then one goal”. The game was played on a pitch that looked like my backyard… laden with irregularities. Seemed hand picked for playing an adversary such as Portugal. Down by one goal from the 10th minute and we still had to call them out to our side of the pitch. All Hungary did was hog the midfield with all they had and wait… yep… wait… and wait some more… and when we got nearer play a very physical game bordering violent with the cunning blessing of the referee. What a dick.

Mind you Hungary is a tough opponent. Very tough. From today’s match it’s easy to assume what’s in store for the next game… park the bus in front of the goal and wreck Portugal’s nerve from the first minute hoping a venomous counter-attack gets the job done.

We played beautifully against Denmark and were down one goal at half-time. We got down and dirty, mistreated the ball against Hungary and were up one goal at half-time. Go figure.

What a mess. I had a knot in my stomach the entire game always expecting Hungary to score a fluke goal out of shear bad-luck from one of our defenders with 2 or 3 lucky rebounds mixed in. Queiroz did the usual lets-defend-this-goal tactic which has failed so miserably before. I’m still in disbelief it actually worked out this time. Nobody managed to win the midfield with an unbelievable amount of missed passes. We simply couldn’t string 3 passes together. And what happened with Tiago today hogging the ball on so many occasions? Did he read my previous game’s post and decided he would be able to pull a couple of Deco moves out of his hat? He played it very simple against Denmark. Received the ball and quickly fed it to Deco or Meireles. I had commented on it negatively although I did mention it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Now I know it wasn’t a bad thing. He can take comfort from the fact Meireles and Deco partnered in this sordid affair.
After an entire first half of this I was dismayed to see Queiroz sub Deco with Simão. The game was screaming for Maniche! Screaming! But… Maniche wasn’t on the bench was he? Nope. Maniche was as dismayed as I was sitting uncomfortably in the stands! Ok then who did we have that could win us the midfield battle? Moutinho was on the bench. He doesn’t have the strongest build but Simão isn’t exactly built like Arnold Schwarzenegger either. Come to think of it the lads are very similar in appearance. Oh well sometimes playing ugly wins you games and this was clearly the case.

We ended the game seeing Hungary desperately shoving the ball into our box in futile attempts to score. The knot grew tighter and tighter. Luckily no fluke goal appeared. No unlucky rebounds. And I thought we lacked scoring skills. But is my calculator not adding up right because I had us needing to score more goals to level out the goal difference disadvantage we have in case we tie in second place with Sweden?! Queiroz must have IBM’s Deep Blue doing his math! That freaking computer did beat Kasparov so what do I know. Fuck it.

A quick note on this night’s pathetic refereeing. There. Said it.

I can already hear some of the more ferocious critics of Portugal say we played crap and don’t deserve to go to South Africa. What do they understand?! Not a damn thing. You have to look at the entire picture of these qualifiers to fully understand exactly what happened and the game today is paramount to this understanding. This overall picture leads to one simple conclusion: Every effing opponent in this group is scared shitless of Portugal! I haven’t seen one single opponent (I mean it! Not one!) that played us head-on to win, even when winning was mandatory (as was the case today). Not Hungary, not Sweden and certainly not group leaders Denmark. And does Sweden deserve it more then us? They won against Hungary with a lucky rebound goal in the last minute and repeated the dose against Malta (MALTA FFS!) with a lucky late own-goal by a Maltese defender! I hope luck has run out for them and when they face Denmark next month it could very well show. And speaking of Denmark… excellent draw! Thank you Albania! Next months Denmark-Sweden will be a thriller! Best of luck for Denmark!

Group standings with 2 games to go:
Denmark - 18
Sweden - 15
Portugal - 13
Hungary - 13
Albania - 7
Malta - 1

Next games:
Denmark - Sweden (Oct. 10)
Portugal - Hungary (Oct. 10)
Denmark - Hungary (Oct. 14)
Sweden - Albania (Oct. 14)
Portugal - Malta (Oct. 14)