World Cup 2010 Qualifier Preview: Malta v. Portugal

September 5th, 2008 | By: Greg | 40 Comments »

Malta v. Portugal
Group 1, Matchday 1: September 6, 2008 @ 2:00 PM Eastern, 20:00 Local
Ta’ Qali Stadium, Malta

North American Television: Setanta Sports LIVE

Preview
It’s Charlie and Company’s first match that actually counts for something. In this case, the match in question happens to be Portugal’s opening qualifying match in Malta against, you guessed it, Malta. We go in odds on favorites and better come out huge winners. Crissy Ron is still out with surgery on his ankle and is aiming for an October return (last I heard), but much shouldn’t be made of his absence for this match as we had better STEAMROLL the Maltesianos. Three points is a fantastic thing to have out of the gates, especially given the way that the Selecção has made us shit our pants thoroughly in the past through bumpy qualifying stages.

It’s the ‘Your Guess is As Good As Mine’ Portuguesian Primary XI

Nani – Nuno Gomes – Simão
Deco – João Moutinho – Maniche
Antunes – Ricardo Carvalho – Pepe – Bosingwa
Quim

I’m slapping Antunes in on the left although I suspect Queiroz will go a bit more conservative and throw Miguel in to start. I don’t think you make a statement and bring back Maniche without the intention of starting him so I’ve also thrown him in there. You could hypothetically form this as a 4-2-3-1 with Nuno Gomes being the ‘1′ and Deco sliding into his spot, but for ease of use and precedent, I’ve listed it as a 4-3-3. Besides, Nuno’s not really a far up top type of striker. Actually, in my opinion, he’s not a striker at all really. To be called that you have to score goals.

Key Player
Deco , Midfielder – His form has been excellent for Chelsea aside from the occasional wild tackle. I’d put Maniche here but I’m not 10000% sure he’s going to start. Deco will be looking to orchestrate a number of midfield attacks and hopefully can replicate the magic he created in week one for Chelsea against Portsmouth (4-0 win).

Tactics
Without a true Trinco in the lineup, Maniche and Moutinho are going to have to work extra hard to get back and defend whatever forward runs Malta may create. Then again, maybe they won’t have to work that hard to get back much at all since I’m hoping Portugal will be spending 95% of the time on Malta’s side of the pitch. They had better blow the doors off this match so we can get some fresh blood out there with so many young guys on the bench and try to work out a solid group that we can rely on to put some fucking numbers on the board. Since the Faroe Islands match didn’t count, I’m not basing my tactical ideas on that but going forward, I’m sure we’ll have a clearer picture of how these dudes will be utilized on an individual and group basis.

Prediction
No offense, but… Malta? They had zero wins and only three points in their 2006 qualifying “run” to have them finish dead last in their group. This better be a statement match to scare the ever living shit out of the rest of the teams Portugal have drawn with…Portugal 7 – 0 Malta.

Força Portugal!!!!



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Comments

Displaying the most recent 25 comments from a total of 40 comments.

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Username By Roxy | September 6th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
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hey forza portugal oh ronaldo u can’t play

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Username By christian | September 6th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
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Portugal won, 4-0, people from Malta suck a dick

Posted from United States United States

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Username By Dwayne aka Joint | September 6th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
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Greg Actually those were all my mates. So you got it wrong there. I showed them your blog and they replied.

Regarding christian from US Malta has a population of 400 000.

I went to the match to see stars like Deco Siamo Nani etc. and was seated right next to Portugese supporters who showed us more respect than someone like you christian.

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By Ali the Horse | September 6th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
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Christian.. suck my cock :) btw I was seated next to a portugese milf yum yum loll

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By ian | September 6th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
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cristian come come to malta so i cna fuk ur face u SON OF A BITCH, fuken american LIBA TA HMAR

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By Nelson from nyc | September 6th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
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4-0 took us a while to get going but when you throw 9 behind the ball there is a lot of crowding infront of the net. BTW Malta is a lovely country with lovely people. Malta is a place where the men are men and the sheep are nervous. Just kidding guys! Malta played the game the only way they could and gave us a good run for 45 minutes. Your Goalie played a hell of a game. Your backline couldn’t bail him out on the rebounds.

Posted from United States United States

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Username By christian | September 7th, 2008 at 3:04 am
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Sorry to all my fans in Malta. For future reference, please do not ask for respect from me if you plan to come on to the Portuguese blog and disrespect the Portuguese team. I have read this blog for over 4 months, and I can confidently say there has never been fans of an opposing country on here talking garbage before a match. Believe me, I have no issues with Malta before you all decided to bombard this blog with ridiculous statements of predicting us “shitting our pants”. I checked my pants and my underwear after the match, and they looked and smelled clean to me. If you don’t believe me, I’ll take a picture for you for proof.

Don’t get me wrong, I am fine with friendly debates as well as your freedom to comment on this blog, but do not expect me to be okay with your garbage talk.

So please, spare me the “fucking in the face” (no thanks, don’t swing that way), informing that I was actually birthed by a female dog not a woman, the portuguese milf, and the population size of Malta. I never said anything about Malta being big or small, so I am not sure of its relevance in this matter. If you’re looking to have a conversation about geography and demographics, sounds delightful.

In other news, I’m fantastic.

Posted from United States United States

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Username By christian | September 7th, 2008 at 3:09 am
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Oh, and a random question. Could anyone explain or knows the reasoning for all the crazy numbers worn by the Portuguese players today? (i.e. Deco-10, Nuno-17, etc.)

Posted from United States United States

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Username By Joe NYC | September 7th, 2008 at 8:34 am
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Nice to get the needed points. But Portugal is ranked 9th in the world and Malta is 133rdh. So it’s difficult to judge how well this new lineup is working. I like the team’s make-up (although I think Postiga should be on it). Let’s see how they do against Denmark (ranked 36th). Denmark played to a draw against Hungary (ranked 50th).

Posted from United States United States

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Username By Ali the horse | September 7th, 2008 at 9:16 am
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Hey Christian.. I didn’t realise you were taking these posts seriously.. here in Malta we are very friendly people :) . We knew that we would probably lose the match and I’m sure your pants are clean (no proof needed). Hope you accept my apology :) xxxx

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By ian | September 7th, 2008 at 9:22 am
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relaxx take it easy man, yes the result was 4 -0 but you really did not impres that much, i saw the game life, in the first half you scored with an AUTOGOAL and the second goal was a mistake from the goalie..as said before we are a small population and u are ranked 9th you SHOULD HAVE DONE MUCH BETTER…anyways e are in the same league U NEVER won anything just like us

cheers

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By ian | September 7th, 2008 at 9:26 am
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Portugal won, 4-0, people from Malta suck a dick

btw u sucked OUR dicks..we were near some nice portgese students which were on holiday here in malta and after the game we went to pv were we had a really good time..guess what…:) MALTA FTW

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By Catarina | September 7th, 2008 at 9:43 am
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ola :)
been reading this blog for quite a while now but never posted before since its not rly my thing … anyways rly glad we started our campaign well, from what i saw im quite happy with the current lineup, some good spells of creativity , specifically in the second half… dont forget that malta was extremely defensive (good goalkeeper btw) , i dont rly remember them attacking at all, maybe abit in the first half but that was it. denmark will indeed be a greater test for us, (and they r very good defensively again) but as far as the ranking goes, i never put too much meaning behind those things, we’ve all seen highly ranked teams play like shit… i.e italy and amg france lol.
i feel bad for italy but tbh i couldnt care less about france, they have been lucky bastards for the last couple of years *remember world cup 2006! :( * and well deserve some good old french misery!!!
Anyways ate logo and see u all on wednesday :)

P.S; to our maltese comrades , i understand why you thought a part of gregs blog above could be thought of as arrogant, but this IS the portuguese blog we r proud of our country and our players and to be completely fair, skill wise we do rank above u, that is not rly arguable, so there was no need to come into our blog and call us all arrogant! when doing so u cant be surprised at certain kind of comments that follow up… that said christian, uve justified ureself somewhat with that second comment , but u still lowered ureself to their lvl (if not lower) with ure first comment.
anyways long p.s. lol, ate logo :) !

Posted from Belgium Belgium

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Username By Catarina | September 7th, 2008 at 9:49 am
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ooh one more thing @ian.. yes it was an own goal but if u watch carefully , almeida i think it was was right there, so if it wasnt for ure guy, it would have been a goal anyways and uuum much better than 4:0 in football is hard to get lol, this isnt basketball ^^.
and yeah ali i have two maltese friends here at uni , both awesome ppl!! we portuguese are a friendly and openminded ppl , we dont mind anyone rly!! ok except the french!! oooh and the spanish!! ooh and…. nah just kidding!
Caty

Posted from Belgium Belgium

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Username By christian | September 7th, 2008 at 11:05 am
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I’m just happy we’ve all stirred the pot enough to get 29 comments on this post. Very niiiiiiiiiice, I like.

To everyone, my bad. I dont really take the posts so seriously. I was trying to convey a message of sarcasm. Even with first message of sucking a dick was just to get you guys riled up, and I was hoping for some witty responses with my 2nd post.

As for what we should all be talking about (the match), I must say Malta played a good game. Their goalkeeper made some fantastic save and one of the goals was put in by his defender. But as someone stated earlier, Hugo was there and probably would’ve put in anyway. I was surprised to see the result at half being only 1-0 Portugal, with no disrespect to Malta. I didn’t totally disagree with Greg’s initial prediction of 7-0 but thought more along the lines of 5-0. None the less, I felt Portugal attacked well and moved the ball pretty well. Happy with the fact that Portugal are the only team currently in their group with 3 pts. I’m hoping they can grab another 3 pts at home v Denmark and start off this qualifying campaign excellently. It would be nice to have such a great and start and getting back Ronaldo in a month.

To Malta, good luck with the rest of the campaign. To our friends from Malta, come post more often. Do you guys have a blog too?

And in other news, I’m going to make myself some pancakes and wait till 1pm to watch the other “football”. Goooooooooooood day.

Posted from United States United States

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Username By christian | September 7th, 2008 at 11:07 am
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Oh, and for everyone, highlights of the game:

http://www.tvgolo.com/football.php?subaction=showfull&id=1220727535&archive=&start_from=&ucat=48&

And if you ever want almost ANY soccer match highlights, go to:
http://www.tvgolo.com

I have no affiliation to the site, but I found it recently and it is amazing.

Posted from United States United States

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Username By Sporting 4 life | September 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
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0-4, see I was right.

Malta fans talking shit you guys are pathetic.

malta is a shithole. the stadium had a power outage, lmao is this supposed to be malta or afghanistan? loll the satelitte feed kept cutting out cuz of your shithole country not being able to have proper technology.

Malta 0-4 Portugal.

PWNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111one

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Username By Pedro | September 7th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
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@ tmacedo: in A´dam, no clue. In R´dam there´s probably some emigrant restaurants (Café Lisboa is one I´ve been to but there´s probably more – there´s a lot of Cape Verdians in R´dam so there´s always a lot of people that want to see, but anyway, there´s always a tuga somewhere in the world…) that have RTP or the tuga sport chanels, etc… The matches that play on RTP you can probably see online on RTP´s site.

Posted from Netherlands Netherlands

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Username By Dwayne aka Joint | September 7th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
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malta is a shithole. the stadium had a power outage, lmao is this supposed to be malta or afghanistan? loll the satelitte feed kept cutting out cuz of your shithole country not being able to have proper technology.

How ignorant.

The Bernabeu had a worse power shortage. I remember them having to play th final few minutes beacause of a total blackout.

Those who watched it on digital Tv didn;t suffer any problems. Your shit satellite did so it seems…..

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By ian | September 7th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
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cristian we are cool :)

to sporting…lofl have u ever been to malta? i gont think so, y all turists that come here LOVE MALTA, because its a small country full of beaches nice girls and lots of turisti coming here to aprty and have fun, sex drugs and alcohol, with the touch of history and culture what do you need more?
ask ur fellow spanish neighbours what they think about malta

so pls shut the fuk up:) faggot

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By ian | September 7th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
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turisti prefer malta over portugal for a holiday, anyday anytime baby

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By Sporting 4 life | September 7th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
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I watched it on the only channel available in north america.. the feed was distrupted because of problems in malta. nothing to do with my satelite.

ok malta has good beaches, nice women, sex, drugs, and spanish tourists. history and culture? the most significant moment in malta history is losing 0-4 to portugal at home in a world cup qualifier because they are privlidged to play against a glorious team such as Portugal in a world cup qualifer its a big moment for them.

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Username By ian | September 8th, 2008 at 6:14 am
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u knwo malta is a smal countyr of around 400k how can we compete with countries that have millions of people…..anyways we played with far teasm better than u liek france england italy and germany:)even we dreaw with turkey that beat u in the euro

Posted from Malta Malta

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Username By Pedro | September 8th, 2008 at 7:24 am
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@Sporting 4 life:
Dude, I’m 100% Tuga and a full hearted Sporting fan – BUT there’s a lot of History concerning Malta – being tuga you should know it as well (well, most of the tugas inside PT don’t really know shit nowadays, anyway…).
So, I’ll give you a hint… Does Malta’s Cross ring any bell…? Look at ours… Which is the same The Discoveries ships carried since 1415 till way deep in the 17th century all the way to Japan, the same cross in FPF’s symbol (just scroll up), the same in the the brasilian football federation and just like Malta’s, it goes back to The Templars… I know it’s old, but hey, after 900 years it’s still around, in PT and in Malta. WE might not live that long… ;-)

Posted from Netherlands Netherlands

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Username By ian | September 8th, 2008 at 8:07 am
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sporting u are my brother, pedro:)

Posted from Malta Malta

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