“Ronaldo is their main player, the aim is not to allow them to show how strong he is, we have to limit him”.
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However, Ronaldo refused to accept Portugal were underdogs against a Croatia side that shocked two-time defending champions Spain to top Group D.
And Santos does not believe Luka Modric’s likely return after sitting out the win over Spain will influence Croatia’s approach.
“I wasn’t really surprised by Croatia’s defeat of a slightly jaded Spain, because as I have already said, Croatia is my outsider of the tournament”, he wrote.
With the draw opening up, his team have a great chance to put that failure firmly to rest, with a run to the final a real possibility.
Having squeezed into the Euro 2016 knockout stages after three contrasting group stage draws, Portugal are ready to move up a gear when they face Croatia in their mouth-watering clash in Lens on Saturday night. After throwing away superiority and a lead against Iceland and then seeing Cristiano Ronaldo miss a penalty in a frustrating goalless draw against Austria, Portugal went into the game with Hungary under threat of an early exit.
“This is a totally different match”. “Croatia has a great team”.
“We respect them, but we know our strengths and we’ll look them in the eye when we face them”. “(Luka) Modric is arguably one of the best players in Europe right now, no one doubts that”.
One of the new names was Sporting midfielder Joao Mario, who made his debut as he replaced Ronaldo in Portugal’s first match under Santos, a friendly against France at Saint-Denis.
“We are aware of what we’ve done so far; we were very good in some aspects but we need to improve in others”, Mario said through an interpreter. Now we have to win, and that’s what we want to do. “If we lose the next match this doesn’t mean anything”, Perisic said. You can also get live commentary in your preferred language – Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.
Up first we have Switzerland v Poland at 11pm (AEST).
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Finally at 5am LIVE and in HD on SBS and online – Croatia v Portugal. ESPN, ESPN Deportes TV, ESPN3 US will broadcast the match at 3 p.m. ET in the United States.
