Portugal Review

In the last years the Portuguese national team have become one of the most difficult opponent to face in the football world. On the one hand the excellent work of Carlos Queiroz, in the beginning of  90's, with the youth teams, where a group of top world class players like Figo, Rui Costa, João Pinto was about to emerge. On the other hand the players that had the opportunity to be trained at F.C. Porto in Mourinho's Era. These facts combined with the Brazilian Scolari, one of the best national team coaches, created the Portuguese dream team and gave to the Portuguese people a feeling we had never experienced before.

Euro 2004 was the perfect chance to win an important event and give to the team the glory it deserved, but the surprising performance of Greece with a very organized group of players and an experienced coach, Otto Rehaggel, managed to overcome Portugal in the final and to win the European Cup.4 years later the Portuguese team achieved to take the 4th place at the World Cup in Germany, it was our 2nd best result ever after the "Eusebio's team" in 1966 with a 3rd place.
At this World Cup we lost some aspects that we had 4 years earlier, especially Mourinho's touch, who left Portugal to coach in England, Chelsea FC.

Later in 2008, at the European Cup a decrease in the Portuguese football quality started to be obvious. The retirement of important players with much influence inside the team along with the inefficient replacements marked the end of the Portuguese "gold era".Realizing this the Portuguese football federation brought again Queiroz to create one more dream team, forgetting the hard work and the time needed for such an achievement.

The present campaign for 2010 World Cup exposes my words in the last paragraph, a poor performance that almost certainly will let Portugal out of the next biggest football event. It's a team  focused only on the super star Cristiano Ronaldo, waiting for him to solve all the problems.

We must create again the infrastructures that led us to the success in the past, starting from the base, To bring another "gold era" is crucial to work with the younger teams again.
In my opinion Portugal will fail this and probably the next qualification phase if nothing will be done till then, and the funny aspect of this is that the blame will go to the only man that manage to create a group of exceptional players in Portugal, Carlos Queiroz, the present national coach.
The memory of the football fans is very short, the present and its results are the only thing that matters, so i'm affraid that his work will end up unfinished.