Portugal remain World Cup believers
Lisbon, May 17: Portugal may not a favourite to win the World Cup but their coach Paulo Bento believes that works in their favour and rivals should beware.
Bento’s belief will face a stern test at the first hurdle, even with Cristiano Ronaldo in the team, as Portugal have been drawn in Group G with stronglyfancied Germany, 2010 quarter- finalists Ghana and the United States.
However, 44- year- old Bento believes that the team is becoming stronger every day.
Whether they have made enough progress to emulate the sides of 1966 and 2006 who reached the semi- finals is questionable but Bento remains convinced of the team’s potential.
“Over the 90 minutes, we could really have achieved that objective of reaching the final ( the penalty shootout loss to Spain in Euro 2012 semifinal),” Bento told uefa. Com.
“What we did after that was continue to compete in the best possible way - trying to achieve objec- tives like our presence now in the 2014 World Cup.”
Bento said Portugal now is operating differently to previous sides.
“There are things we are doing differently now in terms of preparation, in terms of our training, our strategies — they are different from what we did in 2010 or 2011,” he said.
“Football is always evolving and we always need to be ready for that. Portugal play with an identity that we’ve worked on, but obviously we want there to be some evolution in our game.”
Bento’s words did not seem to be supported by what transpired in their World Cup qualifying campaign as they struggled to reach Brazil.