Portugal faced Poland in an international friendly Wednesday night in Warsaw, Poland with both sides playing their last scheduled friendlies before Euro 2012. Within the first 15 minutes of the match, Portugal’s forward, Nani, had 3 attempted goals applying pressure to Poland’s side. At the 20th minute, there was a delay in the game due to an injury of Portugal’s defender, Fabio Coentrão, and could not continue on playing in the match. After Coentrão’s departure, the game took a feisty route with 3 fouls by midfielder, Raul Meireles . During the rest of the first half, both sides tried to score but could not pull through. A mistake by Portugal in the 43rd minute, almost resulted in a goal for Poland, but thankfully the shot went wide. At the 45th minute mark, Nani’s right footed shot side from the right side goes wide to the left, which was assisted by Real Madrid’s and crowd favorite, Cristiano Ronaldo. The attempted shot by Manchester United’s Nani was the last effort for a goal for the first half and ended in 0-0.
The second half started with a slight change with several substitutions, and within the first 3 minutes Miguel Veloso, midfielder, picked up one yellow card (only card for the game), for a bad foul. The next twenty minutes of the game, there were several substitutions from both Portugal and Poland along with attempted shots but all either missed or saved making it a rather slow paced game. Total ball possession Portugal 64% and Poland 36%. The two teams sides were unable to score, and the game finished with a tie at 0-0. Arsenal’s Wojciech Szczęsny had a total of 6 saves, while Rui Patricio had 5 incredible 3 back-to-back-to-back saves occurring in the last 3 minutes of the match.
What’s next? Portugal will face Germany both part of Group B on June 9, 2012 in Warsaw for the European Championship. Portugal will be part of an extremely tough group, but hopefully they can come on top. We will just have to wait and see!
written by Joanna Bouzi; edited by Gail Hidalgo
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