World Cup play-offs: Portugal face Turkey & Cristiano Ronaldo faces two most important games of his international career

Portugal will confront Turkey on March 24, 2022 at Estádio do Dragão for the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup qualifiers’ play-offs.

The Turkish national team will aim to qualify to the play-offs’ finals after they had a relatively solid initial phase in the qualifiers. They were able to win against Montenegro 1-2, make a 2-2 draw at home, beat Gibraltar 6-0 at home and 0-3 away. Moreover, they won 1-2 against Latvia and made a 3-3 draw against the same team at home. But more importantly, Turkey lost 1-6 against Netherlands during these qualifiers when they played their away fixture while they won against the same team 4-2 at home. They also drew against Norway at home and won 0-3 in their away encounter.

This explains two things: first, Turkey is an unpredictable team that can beat anyone since they were able to win against a team like Netherlands during these World Cup Qualifiers. But at the same time, they can easily drop points or lose in a worrying way, like their results suggest. Therefore, Turkey will need to be aware of their weaknesses and try to overcome them by working on the psychological aspect ahead of this game in order to prepare the players to give their best and qualify at the expense of Portugal.

On the other hand, Portugal’s FIFA World Cup Qualifiers’ journey wasn’t that convincing either since they lost to Serbia 1-2 at home and drew 2-2 away, drew against Ireland in their away match and won 2-1 at home, won twice against Luxembourg, 5-0 at home and 3-1 away and won 3-0 against Azerbaijan away and 1-0 at home.

Portugal’s objective is to qualify and meet Italy in the final of play-offs and that’s the expected scenario for most followers of the game. However, big surprises can always happen during such crucial encounters and both Turkey and North Macedonia, who will face Italy, are able to create unexpected surprises if one of them succeed in knocking out one or two of the favourites for the qualification to the 2022’s World Cup.

Portugal will most probably line-up according to the 4-3-3 formation with Rui Patrício as a goalkeeper; Nuno Mendes, Rúben Dias, José Fonte, and João Cancelo in defence, João Moutinho, Danilo Pereira and Renato Sanches in midfield and Diogo Jota, Cristiano Ronaldo and Bernardo Silva in attack.

On the other side, Turkey are expected to start the match using the 4-4-2 formation with Uğurcan Çakır as a goalkeeper, Zeki Çelik, Caner Erkin, Çağlar Söyüncü, and Merih Demiral in defence, Kerem Aktürkoğlu, Hakan Çalhanoğlu, Berat Özdemir and Abdülkadir Ömür in midfield with Halil Dervişoğlu and Burak Yılmaz playing in attack.

Moreover, all eyes will surely be put on Cristiano Ronaldo to see if he would still be able to fly with his national team to the final of the World Cup play-offs after he was successful in scoring 115 international goals in his career, especially when knowing that his late statements were reassuring and encouraging for the Portuguese people and for his teammates, since he insisted on the intention of putting Portugal back to where they belong, among the World Cup playing teams.

For information, the winner of this semi-finals of the play-offs will play against the winner between Italy and North Macedonia on March 29, 2022.