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With a year delay, the Portuguese team will finally defend the title of European champion conquered in 2016, in that mythical final in Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris, with France, in which the ugly duckling Eder wore the cover . superhero and scored, in extra time, the goal that earned him the first international trophy in the history of the corner team.
Euro 2020, which was postponed until 2021 due to the covid-19 pandemic that blocked the world in early March, is scheduled to start on June 11 at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, with Italy in front. Turkey. It will be the start of a competition that was destined to be special, since it served to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the tournament, so 12 cities in different countries were chosen to host the games, thus breaking with the tradition of having one or two countries. organizers. .
A year later, this extraordinary aspect of the tournament may fade, after all it is still not certain that the stadiums can have an audience in the stands … it will always depend on the evolution of the pandemic crisis, although the irruption of vaccines has renewed optimism.
Despite all the limitations, this last stage has everything to become a milestone in Cristiano Ronaldo’s career. In the first place, because at 36 years old, it is most likely that he will play in his last European Championship, in which he will consolidate his status as the player with the most games played (he currently has 21), in addition to becoming the first footballer to participate in five editions. CR7 only needs to score one goal to isolate himself as the best scorer in history in the final stages, as he shares that status with Frenchman Michel Platini, with nine goals scored.
There is another milestone, even more extraordinary, that Ronaldo can achieve at Euro 2020, which has to do with the record of goals in the history of the national teams: for the moment, he has 102 and is eight from ahead of Iranian Ali Daei. Considering that the national team already has three qualifying games scheduled for the 2022 World Cup in March, with Azerbaijan, Serbia and Luxembourg, in addition to some more private matches that must allow time, it is not certain that it will reach the final stage of the Championship of Europe. with a record to beat, but there is no doubt that this would be the ideal setting for the newly elected player of the century to achieve this feat.
CR7’s first chance to make history and for the team to continue its successful saga in the Europeans will be on June 15, at the Puskas Arena, in Budapest, against the Hungarian team, who will play like this at home. It will be the beginning of the defense of the title, in a group that is already considered that of “death”, after all there are still the last two world champions and the current European champion. On June 20 and 24, Fernando Santos’ team will face Germany and France, respectively.
A new generation
The team’s task in the corners is not easy, but the range of players available to the national coach allows us to think that the revalidation of the title will be possible. It is that, in addition to CR7, you can still count on the vast majority of 2016 European champions, after all only goalkeeper Eduardo and defenders Eliseu and Ricardo Carvalho, meanwhile, hung up their boots.
But players like Rui Patrício, Pepe, Raphaël Guerreiro, José Fonte, Danilo Pereira, Renato Sanches, William Carvalho and João Moutinho are still important players for Fernando Santos, who this time should count on Bernardo Silva, who was not part of this triumphal walk in France due to an injury and that, apparently, he will debut in Europeans such as João Félix, the new whooping cough in Portuguese football, in addition to other footballers who emerged, such as Nélson Semedo, João Cancelo, Ricardo Pereira, Rúben Dias, Rúben Semedo , Bruno Fernandes, Pizzi, Sérgio Oliveira, Rúben Neves, Gonçalo Guedes, André Silva, Diogo Jota, Pedro Neto and Francisco Trincão.
Despite being in a complicated group, Portugal has to be seen as one of the candidates to win Euro 2020, as well as France and Germany, but also Spain, England, Holland, Belgium and Italy. And, in this sense, passing the group stage against such competitive teams seems, at first glance, the main difficulty of the selection, although the four best third-placed teams from the group of six groups are also determined.
If they manage to reach the round of 16, the corner team will have the way open to repeat the great campaigns they made in the seven appearances in the European finals, in which they managed to reach the semifinals on three occasions (1984, 2000 and 2012) and two finals (2004 and 2016), ensuring that in the last one he raised the first international trophy in his history.
To do this, however, the first objective is to get through the group stage, a goal that has always been achieved … after that, all dreams are possible.
