Portugal’s middle block with Salvador Salvador and Victor Iturizza was extremely movable and anticipating well, but the whole defence was on fire. Unfortunately for Portugal, Iturizza will be suspended for the match against Germany after his red card from the Denmark match.
For experienced wing António Areia the key was “to keep Denmark under 30 goals, which not many teams achieved in the last years. In general, we need steals and defence to start our fast breaks. We know how strong we can be in attack, because of our quality, but defence is the most important part of our game right now. We could not stop Mathias Gidsel, as he is unstoppable, but we caused him and Denmark problems — and this is how we want to continue.”
Martim Costa, who describes his role as “it’s my job to score goals”, is also aware how important a stable defence is.
“We know that Denmark is the best team in the world in attack, so we needed to be perfect in every detail and to be 100 per cent focused for every second of the match, as if you are not aware they score a goal. We only conceded 11 goals at half-time, which is amazing against Denmark. Our goalkeepers really helped us, we found good solutions for everything in defence,” Costa says.