Portugal dismantles the Icelandic iron bucket and has a 100% winning rate to enter the European Cup!
In the final round of Group J of the European Championship qualifiers, Portugal defeated Iceland 2-0. For the table that has already confirmed the first place to advance, this game is insignificant, and the score is not surprising at all. But for Portugal, the game symbolizes a 100 per cent win rate for next year's European Championships, and they are the only team to achieve a 100 per cent win rate in this tournament.
After winning 2-0 away to Liechtenstein, Portugal put on an unusually aggressive lineup, using Ruben Neves at centre-back and Felix at wing-back. This game returned to the home stadium and returned to normalcy, defending with a normal back four. Of course, the attack was not conservative at all, pushing up right-back João Mário Lopes, leaving the back João Palhinha to form a three-centre-back at the back, and adding a left-back João Cancelo in front of him to adduct the midfield, connecting back to the back and midfield.
With this in mind, Bruno Fernandes and Otávio formed a midfield axis, supporting the left and right flanks of the formation with Joao Cancelo behind. In addition, after Joao Palhinha retreated, the central defenders of Inácio and Ruben Dias were pulled to both sides of the formation, so that both sides could form a suppressive situation with more people and fewer people at any time, so as to contain Iceland's 4-4-2 defence, forcing Iceland's forwards to retreat further and greatly reduce the danger of Portugal being counterattacked.
Although this game is "routine business", in front of Iceland's iron bucket formation, it is also a test of Portugal's ability to break the game and prevent it from being forced to draw against the weaker team in the group stage next year.
In the midfield double axis, compared to Otavio's degree of freedom, Bruno Fernandes's position is closer to the right half-space, and he forms a right trio with right-back Joao Mario and Bernardo Silva on the right wing at any time, forcing Iceland's bucket formation to lean towards the right side of Portugal, so that João Félix, who is on the far left of the formation, can have more opportunities to enter the penalty area and play his true colors as a support behind the three gates.
Under this arrangement, Felix, who is on the left wing and has no left-back to support, has a good performance of 3 shots and 3 shots on target in this game, which shows that this approach is one of the good ways for Portugal to dismantle the iron bucket. The reason why he did not have left-back support on the left side was because Cancelo was relatively free, and he would even take advantage of the defensive holes created by Icelandic midfielder Ísak Jóhannesson's pressure on Otavio, and give up his own midfield position to break forward.
Of the six teams in Group J, Portugal is significantly better than the other five, with Roberto Martinez leading Portugal to ten wins in the qualifiers for the first time. Benefiting from the correct tactical arrangement, Ronaldo, the big brother of the arrow, played 90 minutes in this game without feeling hard, although he did not score in 7 shots, but also handed over an assist in the second half, opening up the team to 2-0 and locking up the result of winning all the qualifiers.