Portugal’s qualification bid suffers yet another setback

Carlos Queiroz’s side could trail by seven points on Wednesday

There is now a distinct possibility that the reigning world player of the year Cristiano Ronaldo will not be in South Africa next summer after Portugal drew 0-0 at home to Sweden.

Carlos Queiroz’s side have won just one of their first five qualifiers and find themselves four points behind Denmark and Hungary in Group 1 and that margin is likely to widen on Wednesday when they host Albania and Malta respectively, while Portugal aren’t in action.

The 2006 semi-finalists’ saving grace could be that they still have to face Hungary twice but just one more slip-up would severely jeopardise their chances of even making the play-offs. Despite this they are still second favourites to win the group and the best price available is 11/4 with 888sport.

Bad signs

Portugal have now failed to beat Sweden with home advantage on seven separate attempts. This has been their worst start to a World Cup qualifying campaign since 1970 and they are three points worse off than they were at this point when Queiroz failed to guide them to USA 1994:

Portugals first five WC qualifiers:
1970 W1 D1 L3 PTS 4
1974 W2 D2 L1 PTS 8
1978 W3 D1 L1 PTS 10
1982 W2 D1 L2 PTS 7
1986 W3 D0 L2 PTS 9
1990 W3 D1 L1 PTS 10
1994 W2 D2 L1 PTS 8
1998 W2 D2 L1 PTS 8
2002 W3 D1 L1 PTS 11
2006 W4 D1 L0 PTS 13
2010 W1 D3 L1 PTS 6

(1986, 2002 and 2006 were the only successful campaigns listed above. All points totals are worked out using three points for a win, even if that wasn’t the system in place at that time.)

Posted: March 30th, 2009 by Michael Lintorn |