Portugal vs Czech Republic live updates (2024)

Portugal: Costa, Dias, Pepe, Nuno Mendes, Dalot, Bruno Fernandes, Vitinha, Joao Cancelo, Bernardo Silva, Ronaldo, Leao.

Subs: Rui Patricio, Nelson Semedo, Joao Palhinha, Goncalo Ramos, Joao Felix, Jose Sa, Danilo Pereira, Inacio, Joao Neves, Matheus Luiz, Ruben Neves, Jota, Silva, Pedro Neto, Francisco Conceicao.

Czech Republic: Stanek, Hranac, Krejci, Holes, Soucek, Coufal, Provod, Sulc, Doudera, Schick, Kuchta.

Subs: Zima, Vitik, Barak, Sevcik, Hlozek, Chytil, David Jurasek, Kovar, Cerny, Chory, Lingr, Cerv, Jaros, Vlcek, Matej Jurasek.

Referee: Marco Guida (Italy)

It’s official: Cristiano Ronaldo will become the first player to feature at six European Championship tournaments after being named in Portugal’s starting lineup for their opening game against the Czech Republic.

39-year-old Ronaldo made his tournament debut all the way back at Euro 2004, when Portugal reached the final on home soil only to lose to Greece.

He already has the records the most appearances (25) and goals (14) at the tournament.

Hasek also said that his side had a special plan to deal with Cristiano Ronaldo.

He added: “We want to neutralise Ronaldo, especially for our guys, they will remember this their whole life.

“Ronaldo is one of the best players and they will be able to say they played against him and maybe they will even be successful. It will be something to remember their whole life.”

Czech Republic manager Ivan Hasek shares the opinion of his captain. And he admitted that Portugal will be a real threat to his unbeaten record as manager of the national side, which spans nine games across two periods.

“If you see Portugal, you see that they have players who play in the biggest clubs and they are the biggest stars in those clubs,” Hasek told reporters.

“So, Portugal obviously is one of the favourites of this tournament and we know that going into the game tomorrow, but we do want to win even then.”

Czech Republic captain Tomas Soucek said that he believes Portugal can go all the win at this summer’s European Championship in Germany.

‘Portugal is not only favourites in our group, but favourites to win the whole tournament,” the West Ham midfielder added.

“They have shown their quality in the past years. Obviously Ronaldo is the mega star. For the last 20 years he has been the biggest star in Portugal.”

Cristiano Ronaldo is yet to be named the player of the tournament at a European Championship, however.

A Player of the Tournament award has been given out at the European Championship at the last seven iterations having been introduced for the 1996 tournament in England.

UEFA have acknowledged a player for each tournament in three that preceded that one, so we will include those here too.

• 1984 – Michel Platini (France)
• 1988 – Marco van Basten (Netherlands)
• 1992 – Peter Schmeichel (Denmark)
• 1996 – Matthias Sammer (Germany)
• 2000 – Zinedine Zidane (France)
• 2004 – Theodoros Zagorakis (Greece)
• 2008 – Xavi (Spain)
• 2012 – Andres Iniesta (Spain)
• 2016 – Antoine Griezmann (France)
• 2020 – Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy)

The Golden Boot is the award given to the player who scores the most goals at the tournament.

Since 2008, where players have been tied on goals scored, it goes to a tie-break where the player with more assists wins out.

Here are all the winners since the tournament expanded to eight teams — before expanding to 16 and now 24 — in 1980.

• 1980: Klaus Aloffs (Germany) – Three goals
• 1984: Michel Platini (France) – Nine goals
• 1988: Marco van Basten (Netherlands) – Five goals
• 1992: Dennis Bergkamp (Netherlands), Tomas Brolin (Sweden), Henrik Larsen (Denmark), Karl-Heinz Riedle (Germany) – Three goals
• 1996: Alan Shearer (England) – Five goals
• 2000: Patrick Kluivert (Netherlands), Savo Milosevic (Yugoslavia) – Five goals
• 2004: Milan Baros (Czech Republic) – Five goals
• 2008: David Villa (Spain) – Four goals
• 2012: Fernando Torres (Spain) – Three goals
• 2016: Antoine Griezmann (France) – Six goals
• 2020: Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) – Five goals

Interestingly, the second oldest player at the tournament after defender Pepe is his team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo - 39 years 4 months old - who you may have heard of.

If Ronaldo scores, he could become the oldest goalscorer in Euros history, surpassing Austria’s Ivica Vastic at 38 years, 257 days.

He is also set to extend his record of the most European Championship games (25) and the most Euro tournaments as a male player (this will be his sixth).

Portugal defender Ruben Dias was also grilled on Cristiano Ronaldo’s inclusion in Portugal’s squad and he was even more effusive in his praise.

“I would say he represents inspiration, he represents that everything is possible, he represents that you can dream and you can achieve it,” he said.

“It's obviously a pleasure to have him with us in this moment of his career. He represents to us that he really wants to win again and he's our captain and obviously we follow him to the end.”

Roberto Martinez also made sure to defend Portugal’s talisman Cristiano Ronaldo from criticism that he should not have been included in Portugal’s final squad for the tournament.

“Cristiano is in the national team on merit. Nobody gets into the national team just by having a name. Cristiano scored 51 goals in 50 games (for Al-Nassr last season),” Martinez said of the 39-year-old forward.

“For us he is a goalscorer, someone who can make that final move, someone who can really stretch defenders, really open spaces. Obviously, over the years Cristiano has changed his way of playing slightly, but I can only say that Cristiano is in the national team on merit and the numbers are there to back that up.”

Portugal head coach Roberto Martinez urged his players to dream big yesterday, ahead of their opening 2024 European Championship match against Czech Republic later.

“We must believe, we need to dream big,” he told reporters.

“If we don't dream big, then it will be tough. But we also owe it to everyone to play well.

“Tomorrow will be the right time to show that we're ready, that we can meet all the expectations... I brought seven shirts, not three. But now we need to put it all out there on the pitch for these first three matches.”

• Manager: Ivan Hasek
• Captain: Tomas Soucek
• Qualifying record: P8, W4, D3, L1, GF12, GA6
• Euro 2020: Quarter-finals
• Most caps in squad: Tomas Soucek (69)
• Top scorer in squad: Patrik Schick (19)

• Manager: Roberto Martinez
• Captain: Cristiano Ronaldo
• Qualifying record: P10, W10, D0, L0, GF36, GA2
• Euro 2020: Round of 16
• Most caps in squad: Cristiano Ronaldo (206)
• Top scorer in squad: Cristiano Ronaldo (128)

Germany and Spain are the most successful nations in European Championship history with three titles apiece and are followed by holders Italy and France who have both won two.

Six nations follow them with one each, including Portugal.

• 3 titles: Spain (1964, 2008, 2012) & Germany (1972, 1980, 1996)
• 2 titles: Italy (1968, 2020) & France (1984, 2000)
• 1 title: Portugal (2016), Greece (2004), Denmark (1992), Netherlands (1988), Czech Republic (1976), Russia (1960)

There are currently no continental major tournaments at international level that are made up of more than 24 teams. Copa America has just 16 while the European Championship and the Africa Cup of Nations both have 24.

But there is an argument that the Euros is ready to expand to bring it in line with the World Cup by also being a 32-team tournament.

This year, Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard will miss out as Norway failed to qualify, similarly Alexander Isak with Sweden. There is no place for 2016 semi-finalists Wales or 2004 winners Greece.

While they would probably not be contending for the trophy, none of those four teams would look out of place at this year’s tournament and the same can be said for several other European nations. So, maybe it is time for another expansion and one that would simplify qualification to the knockout stage as, like at the World Cup, the top two teams from every group progress while the bottom two are eliminated.

European football certainly has the breadth of quality to justify it and despite UEFA’s claims, it does feel only a matter of time before that decision is made.

The European Championship has been played every four years since 1960, but the tournament looks much different now to how it did 64 years ago.

In 1960, 17 teams entered the competition but the finals were whittled down to just four teams: France, Yugoslavia, Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

And for 20 years, that is how it stayed until a decision was made to double the amount of competing teams to eight.

Following triumphs for West Germany (1980), France (1984), Netherlands (1988) and Denmark (1992), the field doubled again to 16.

And with the quality of European football continuing to improve at an exponential rate, the demand for a 24-team tournament grew and was finally passed a few months after the 2008 Championship.

This will be the fourth Euros played with 24 teams and, despite calls to increase to 32 teams, that is how it will stay for the foreseeable future after UEFA confirmed last year that ‘no change has been proposed for the UEFA EURO final tournament”.

The 24 teams have been split into six four-team groups and it is hard to argue against Group B looking like the toughest while Germany, England and Belgium have been handed seemingly easier draws.

• Group A: Germany, Hungary, Scotland, Switzerland
• Group B: Spain, Albania, Croatia, Italy
• Group C: England, Denmark, Slovenia, Serbia
• Group D: France, Austria, Netherlands, Poland
• Group E: Belgium, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine
• Group F: Portugal, Turkey, Czech Republic, Georgia

Keeping clean sheets.

Since 2022, the Czechs have only kept four clean sheets in 15 competitive matches, all of which came against Moldova and Faroe Islands.

Considering the quality of the opposition in the European Championship, they will need to get better at keeping things tight at the back if they want to progress to the knockout rounds.