World Cup rewind: Spain, Portugal doing it the hard way
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Our first round of 16 matchups are confirmed. Uruguay will play Portugal and Spain will play Russia. With due respect to Egypt, a trendy pick to make it to the last 16, those were more or less the games we expected ahead of the tournament. And yet the way we arrived at them was entirely unexpected, with both Spain and Portugal struggling in Group B against Morocco and Iran.
Spain drew 2-2 with Morocco, thanks to a last-minute Iago Aspas goal that was initially ruled out for offside, only for the referee to change his mind after a VAR review. The goal saw them top the group on goals scored, but Fernando Hierro’s side looked far from convincing for the third game in a row.
As for Portugal, they came even closer to going out. Besides Ricardo Quaresma’s sublime opening goal, not much went right for Portugal. Cristiano Ronaldo had a penalty saved by Ali Beiranvand, and could have been sent off for an elbow in the second half, while Mehdi Taremi missed a good chance to win it for Iran, and knock Portugal out, late in second-half stoppage time.
Portugal started slowly at Euro 2016, advancing out of the group without winning a game, but it’s hard to imagine them making it far in this form, particularly as they’re likely to end up on the same half of the draw as Brazil, France and Germany. Their first test will come against a Uruguay team that haven’t conceded all tournament.
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Uruguay maintained that record with comfortable 3-0 win against Russia to take top spot in Group A. Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani both got on the score sheet as Oscar Tabarez’s side won their third group game out of three. Given the competition in Group A, however, it remains difficult to judge how good they are.
The final match of the day saw Egypt take on Saudi Arabia in a dead rubber. Egypt keeper Essam El-Hadary became the oldest player in World Cup history and Mohamed Salah opened the scoring, his second goal of the tournament, but the Green Falcons came from behind for their first World Cup win in 24 years.
Tuesday’s action begins in Group C, where France take on Denmark (10 a.m. ET) with top spot on the line and Australia play Peru (10 a.m. ET) knowing a win, coupled with a Denmark loss, could see them advance. Argentina take on Nigeria at 2 p.m. ET. If Croatia can avoid defeat against Iceland at the same time, the winner of Argentina-Nigeria will advance.