It seems days are passing by faster than ever, or it could be the curiosity of upcoming mega soccer event in Brazil where the world would eye to see how exaggerated hosts perform in front of their home crowd. This has always been a greatest challenge for every country who hosts a big sporting event and soccer world cup has always been a special one. On paper, Brazil has the wealth of meat in their squad; perhaps they can make any team stun with their eye candies likes of Neymar, yet they are also under pressure to prove they can win a world cup at home. Being the hosts, they don’t need to qualify for the event while others are still fighting for a confirmed place in the global soccer event; still Brazilian coach is gearing up his socks to find out better than the best for his last eleven. This is not an easy task especially if you have several world class footballers in your squad, and more importantly, Brazilians are lacking a parallel opportunity to test their strength, after all you can’t pick up your final team just based on Confederation cup as things have since changed considerably. However, Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari can breathe some fresh air coz they are going to meet Portugal in a friendly back in Foxborough. This would be a non-world cup match but he is taking it like a regular three points’ match where he needs to prove how they would change whole arithmetic next year.
Portuguese have not yet qualified for the world cup, which means, it would also give them a solid platform to prepare their fighting skills although they are already in good form and recently crushed Northern Ireland by 4-2 in a WC qualifier. Scolari said about their friendly, “We are not playing it like a friendly but like a three-point match. We are playing Portugal as if it is the World Cup. We played Switzerland like that, we played Australia like that, and we have to play Portugal like that.”
While talking about Cristiano Ronaldo, he added, “The Portuguese national team is not just about Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese national team is a strong team that deserves our respect. It is a selection of tradition and has everything to be a great game. The players are fighting for a place in the team and we only have five more matches. So every match for us is very important and the match against Portugal is like that.”